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MACMILLAN'S  STANDARD  LIBRARY 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


BY 

STOPFORD  A.  BROOKE,  M.A. 

WITH  CHAPTERS  ON 

ENGLISH   LITERATURE  (1832-1892)  AND 
ON  AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

BY 

GEORGE   R.  CARPENTER 


NEW   YORK 

GROSSET    &    DUNLAP 

PUBLISHERS 


OomaaHT,  1896, 
Br  THE  MACMILLAN  CX)MPANY. 

Copyright   1900, 
Bt  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Revised  edition  printed  August,  igoo.    Reprinted  September 

X900;  March,  igoi   ;  March,  190a;  February,  1903;  October,  1904; 
February,  May,  1906. 


NorfaooB  ^rrsa 

t.  S.  Cuihing  ft  Co.  —  Berwick  k  SmlUl 
Norwood  Hmb.  U.S.A. 


Annex 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

At  the  request  of  the  publishers  and  with  the  con- 
sent of  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke,  Chapters  IX-XII  have 
been  added  by  Mr.  George  R.  Carpenter  of  Columbia 
University.  It  is  appropriate  at  this  time  to  recall  to  the 
pubUc  the  history  of  this  remarkable  little  volume,  which 
has,  in  a  way,  become  an  English  classic.  It  was  first 
issued  by  Macmillan  and  Company,  in  1876,  under  the 
title  o{  A  Primer  of  English  Literature,  and  won  the 
warm  approbation  of  Matthew  Arnold,  whose  essay, 
"  A  Guide  to  English  Literature  "  {Mixed  Essays,  pages 
135-153),  is  a  critical  estimate  of  Mr.  Brooke's  method 
and  results.  In  1896  the  volume  was  revised  and  in 
part  rewritten  by  the  author,  and  appeared  under  the 
title  of  English  Literature.  The  present  additions  con- 
tinue the  history  of  English  Literature  through  the 
period  ending  with  the  deaths  of  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing, and  include  a  brief  sketch  of  American  Literature. 

THE  PUBLISHERS. 

March,  xgoa 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

English   Literature  before  the   Norman    Conquest, 
670-1066        I 

CHAPTER  II 
From  the  Conquest  to  Chaucer's  Death,  1066-1400     .      32 

CHAPTER   III 
From  Chaucer's  Death  to  Elizabeth,  1400-1558   .       .      72 

CHAPTER  IV 
The  Reign  of  Elizabeth,  1558-1603        ....     98 

CHAPTER  V 

From  Elizabeth's  Death  to  the  Restoration,   1603- 

1660 150 

CHAPTER  VI 

From  the   Restoration  to   the   Death   of  Pope  and 

Swift,  1660-1745 .     170 


VIU  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VII 

PAGB 

Prose  Literature  from  the  Death  of  Pope  and  Swift 
TO  the  French  Revolution,  and  from  the  French 
Revolution  to  the  Death  of  Scott,  1745-1832      .    ig6 

CHAPTER  VIII 
Poetry  from  1730-1832      ...•.,,    213 

CHAPTER  IX 
Prose  Literature  from  the  Death  of  Scott  to  the 

Death  of  George  Eliot,  1832-1881   ....    250 

CHAPTER  X 
Poetry  from  the  Death  of  Scott  to  the  Deaths  of 

Tennyson  and  Browning,  1832-1892  ....    276 

CHAPTER  XI 
Prose  Literature  in  the  United  States        .       •       .    281 

CHAPTER  XII 
Poetry  in  the  United  States 309 

Chronological  Table         ....••.    323 

Index    .*..« 343 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

CHAPTER  I 

WRITERS  BEFORE  THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST,  67O-IO66 

I.  The  History  of  English  Literature  is  the  story 
of  what  great  EngUsh  men  and  women  thought  and  felt, 
and  then  wrote  down  in  good  prose  and  beautiful  poetry 
in  the  English  language.  The  story  is  a  long  one.  It 
begins  in  England  about  the  year  670;  it  had  its  un- 
written beginnings  still  earlier  on  the  Continent,  in  the 
old  Angle- Land;  it  was  still  going  on  in  the  year  which 
closes  this  book,  1832  ;  nor  has  our  literature  lost  any  of 
its  creative  force  in  the  years  which  have  followed  1832. 
Into  this  little  book  then  is  to  be  briefly  put  the  story  of 
nearly  1200  years  of  the  thoughts,  feelings,  and  imagina- 
tion of  a  great  people.  Every  English  man  and  woman 
has  good  reason  to  be  proud  of  the  work  done  by  their 
forefathers  in  prose  and  poetry.  Every  one  who  can 
write  a  good  book  or  a  good  song  may  say  to  himself, 
"  I  belong  to  a  noble  company,  which  has  been  teaching 


2  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

and  delighting  the  world  for  more  than  looo  years." 
And  that  is  a  fact  in  which  those  who  write  and  those 
who  read  English  literature  ought  to  feel  a  noble  pride. 

2.  The  English  and  the  "Welsh.  —  This  literature  is 
written  in  English,  the  tongue  of  our  fathers.  They 
lived,  while  this  island  of  ours  was  still  called  Britain,  in 
North  and  South  Denmark,  in  Hanover  and  Friesland  — 
Jutes,  Angles,  and  Saxons.  Their  common  tongue  and 
name  were  English;  but,  either  because  they  were 
pressed  from  the  inland,  perhaps  by  Attila,  or  for  pure 
love  of  adventure,  they  took  to  the  sea,  and,  landing  at 
various  parts  of  Britain  at  various  times,  drove  back, 
after  150  years  of  hard  fighting,  the  Britons,  whom  they 
called  Welsh,  to  the  land  now  called  Wales,  to  Strath- 
clyde,  and  to  Cornwall.  It  is  well  for  those  who  study 
English  literature  to  remember  that  in  these  places 
the  Britons  remained  as  a  distinct  race  with  a  distinct 
literature  of  their  own,  because  the  stories  and  the  poetry 
of  the  Britons  crept  afterwards  into  English  literature 
and  had  a  great  influence  upon  it.  Moreover,  in  the 
later  days  of  the  Conquest,  a  great  number  of  the  Welsh 
were  amalgamated  with  the  English.  The  whole  tale  of 
King  Arthur,  of  which  English  poetry  and  even  English 
prose  is  so  full,  was  a  British  tale.  Some  then  of  the 
imaginative  work  of  the  conquered  afterwards  took  cap- 
tive their  fierce  conquerors. 

3.  The  English  Tongue.  —  The  earliest  form  of  our 
English  tongue  is  very  different  from  modem  English  in 
form,  pronunciation,  and  appearance ;  but  still  the  Ian- 


1  fiARLY   WRITERS   TO   THE   CONQUEST  3 

guage  written  in  the  year  700  is  the  same  as  that  in 
which  the  prose  of  the  Bible  is  written,  just  as  much  as 
the  tree  planted  a  hundred  years  ago  is  the  same  tree 
to-day.  It  is  this  sameness  of  language,  as  well  as  the 
sameness  of  national  spirit,  which  makes  our  literature 
one  literature  for  1200  years. 

4.  Of  English  Literature  written  in  this  tongue  we 
have  no  extant  prose  until  the  time  of  King  Alfred. 
Men  like  Bseda  and  Ealdhelm  wrote  their  prose  in 
Latin.  But  we  have,  in  a  few  manuscripts,  a  great  deal 
of  poetry  written  in  English,  chiefly  before  the  days 
of  Alfred.  There  is  (i)  the  MS.  under  the  name  of 
CcedmorCs  Paraphrase,  a  collection  of  religious  poems 
by  various  writers,  now  in  the  Bodleian.  There  is  (2) 
the  MS.  oi  Beowulf  and  of  the  last  three  books  of 
Judith.  There  is  (3)  the  Exeter  Book,  a  miscellaneous 
collection  of  poems,  left  by  Leofric,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  to 
his  cathedral  church  in  the  year  107 1.  There  is  (4)  the 
Vercelli  Book,  discovered  at  Vercelli  in  the  year  1822,  in 
which,  along  with  homilies,  there  is  a  collection  of  six 
poems.  A  few  leaflets  complete  the  list  of  the  MSS. 
containing  poems  earlier  than  iElfred.  All  together  they 
constitute  a  vernacular  poetry  which  consists  of  more 
than  twenty  thousand  lines. 

5.  The  metre  of  the  poems  is  essentially  the  same,  un- 
like any  modern  metre,  without  rhyme,  and  without  any 
fixed  number  of  syllables.  Its  essential  elements  were 
accent  and  alliteration.  Every  verse  is  divided  into  two 
half-verses  by  a  pause,  and  has  four  accented  syllables, 


4  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

while  the  number  of  unaccented  syllables  is  indifferent. 
These  half-verses  are  linked  together  by  alliteration.  The 
two  accented  syllables  of  the  first  half,  and  one  of  the 
accented  syllables  in  the  second  half,  begin  with  the  same 
consonant,  or  with  vowels  which  were  generally  different 
one  from  another.  This  is  the  formal  rule.  But  to  give 
a  greater  freedom  there  is  often  only  one  alliterative 
letter  in  the  first  half-verse.  Here  is  an  example  of  the 
usual  form :  — 

And  </eaw-</rtas :  on  <£ege  weur'Se^ 
Winde  geondsSwen. 

And  the  </ew-</ownfall :  at  the  (/ay-break  ii 
Winnowed  by  the  wind. 

This  metre  was  continually  varied,  and  was  capable, 
chiefly  by  the  addition  of  unaccented  syllables,  of  many 
harmonious  changes.  The  length  of  the  lines  depended 
on  the  nature  of  the  things  described,  or  on  the  rise  and 
fall  of  the  singer's  emotion  ;  the  emphatic  words  in  which 
the  chief  thought  lay  were  accented  and  alliterated,  and 
probably  received  an  additional  force  by  the  beat  of  the 
hand  upon  the  harp.  All  the  poetry  was  sung,  and  the 
poet  could  alter,  as  he  sang,  the  movement  of  the  verse. 
But,  however  the  metre  was  varied,  it  was  not  varied 
arbitrarily.  It  followed  clear  rules,  and  all  its  develop- 
ments were  built  on  the  simple  original  type  of  four 
accents  and  three  alHterated  syllables.  This  was  the 
vehicle,  interspersed  with  some  rare  instances  in  which 
rhymes  were  employed,  in  which  all  EngUsh  poetry  was 


I  EARLY   WRITERS    TO   THE    CONQUEST  5 

sung  and  written  till  the  French  system  of  rhymes,  metres, 
and  accents  was  transferred  to  the  English  tongue ;  and 
it  continued,  alongside  of  the  French  system,  to  be  used, 
sometimes  much  and  sometimes  little,  until  the  sixteenth 
century.  Nor,  though  its  use  was  finished  then,  was  its 
influence  lost.  Its  habits,  especially  alliteration,  have 
entered  into  all  English  poetry. 

6.  The  Characters  of  this  Poetry.  —  (i)  It  is  marked 
by  parallelism.  It  frequently  repeats  the  same  statement 
or  thought  in  different  ways.  But  this  is  not  so  common 
as  it  is,  for  example,  in  Hebrew  poetry.  (2)  It  uses 
the  ordinary  metaphorical  phrases  of  Teutonic  poetry, 
such  as  the  whale' s-road  for  the  sea,  but  uses  them  with 
greater  moderation  or  with  less  inventiveness  than  the 
Icelandic  poets.  Elaborate  similes  are  not  found  in  the 
earlier  poetry,  but  later  poets,  Cynewulf  especially,  invent 
them,  not  frequently,  but  well.  (3)  A  great  variety  of 
compound  words,  chiefly  adjectives,  also  characterise  it, 
by  the  use  of  which  the  poet  strove  to  express  with 
brevity  a  number  of  qualities  belonging  to  his  subject. 
When  Tennyson  used  such  adjectives  as  hollow-vaulied, 
dainty-woeful,  he  was  returning  to  the  custom  of  his 
ancient  predecessors.  (4)  At  times  the  poetry  is  con- 
cise and  direct,  but  this  is  chiefly  found  in  those  parts 
of  the  poems  which  have  some  relation  to  heathen 
times.  For  the  most  part,  save  when  the  subject  is 
war  or  sea-voyaging,  the  poetry  is  diffuse,  and  wearies 
by  a  constant  repetition.  But  we  owe  a  great  deal  of 
this  repetition  to  the  introduction  of  extempore  matter 


6  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

by  the  bards  as  they  sung.  There  is  not  much  of  it  in 
poems  which  have  been  carefully  edited,  as  many  were 
in  the  time  of  Alfred.  Nor  do  I  think  that  the  original 
lays  which  the  bards  expanded  were  more  diffuse  than 
the  early  Icelandic  lays.  (5)  It  is  the  earliest  extant 
body  of  poetry  in  any  modern  language.  It  began  to 
be  written  in  England  towards  the  close  of  the  seventh 
century,  and  all  its  best  work  was  done  before  the  close 
of  the  eighth.  (6)  Its  width  of  range  is  very  remarkable. 
The  epic  is  represented  in  it  by  Beowulf.  Judith  is  an 
heroic  saga.  The  earlier  Genesis  is  a  paraphrase  with 
original  episodes.  The  later  Genesis  is  an  epic  fragment 
with  dramatic  conversations,  and  in  other  poems  there 
are  traces  of  what  might  have  formed  a  basis  for  a 
dramatic  literature.  The  Exodus  is  an  heroic  narrative, 
freely  invented  on  the  Biblical  story.  The  Christ  of 
Cynewulf  is  a  threefold  poem,  conceived  like  a  trilogy, 
in  the  honour  of  Christ,  the  Hero.  Narrative  poetry  is 
represented  by  Cynewulf  s  poems  of  the  life  of  Saint 
GutSlac,  of  the  martyrdom  of  Saint  Juliana,  by  the  Elene 
and  the  Andreas.  There  is  one  pure  lyric,  and  there 
are  sacred  hymns  of  joy  among  Cynewulfs  poems  which 
have  all  the  quality  of  lyrics.  There  are  five  elegiac 
poems.  There  are  a  number  of  Riddles,  some  of 
which  are  poems  of  pure  natural  description.  There 
are  didactic,  gnomic,  and  allegorical  poems.  Almost 
every  form  of  poetry  is  represented.  (7)  It  is  the 
only  early  poetry  which  has  poems  wholly  dedicated  to 
descriptions  of  nature.    Of  such  descriptions  there  is  no 


I  EARLY   WRITERS   TO   THE   CONQUEST  J7 

trace  in  the  Icelandic  poetry.  For  anything  resembling 
them  we  must  look  forward  to  the  nineteenth  century. 
(8)  Many  of  the  poems  are  extraordinarily  modem  in 
feeling.  The  hymns  of  Cynewulf  might  have  been  writ- 
ten by  Crashaw.  The  sentiment  of  the  Wanderer  and  the 
Ruin  might  belong  to  this  century.  The  Seafarer  has 
the  same  note  of  feeling  for  the  sea  which  prevails  in 
the  sea-poetry  of  Swinburne  and  Tennyson.  (9)  There 
is  no  trace  of  any  Norse  influence  or  religion  on  early 
English  poetry.  Old  Saxon  poetry  influenced  the  later 
English  verse,  but  may  itself  have  been  derived  from 
England.  The  poetry  of  natural  description  owes  much 
to  the  Celtic  influence  which  was  largely  present  in 
Northumbria,  but  otherwise  there  is  no  Celtic  note  in 
early  English  poetry.  There  is  a  classic  note.  Virgil 
and  other  Latin  poets  were  read  by  those  whom  Baeda 
taught,  and  the  ancient  models  had  their  wonted  power. 
The  unexpected  strain  of  culture,  so  remarkable  in  this 
poetry,  must,  I  think,  be  due  to  this  influence.  (10) 
The  greater  part  of  this  poetry  was  written  in  Nor- 
thumbria, and  before  the  coming  of  the  Danes.  This  has 
been  questioned,  but  it  seems  not  wisely.  The  only 
examples  of  any  importance  outside  of  this  statement 
are  the  war-lyrics  in  the  Chronicle  and  that  portion 
of  the  Caedmonic  poems  which  it  is  now  beUeved  was 
translated  from  an  Old  Saxon  original,  probably  in  the 
time  of  Alfred. 

7.  The  First  English  Poems.  —  Our  forefathers,  while 
as  yet  they  were  heathen  and  lived  on  the  Continent, 


S  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAR 

made  poems,  and  of  this  poetry  we  may  possess  a  few 
remains.  The  earliest  is  The  Song  of  the  Traveller  — 
Widsith,  the  far-goer  —  but  it  has  been  filled  up  by 
later  insertions.  It  is  not  much  more  than  a  catalogue 
of  the  folk  and  the  places  whither  the  minstrel  said  he 
went  with  the  Goths,  but  when  he  expands  concerning 
himself,  he  shows  so  pleasant  a  pride  in  his  art  that 
he  wins  our  sympathy.  Dear's  Complaint  is  another 
of  these  poems.  Its  form  is  that  of  a  true  lyric.  The 
writer  is  a  bard  at  the  court  of  the  Heodenings,  from 
whom  his  rival  takes  his  place  and  goods.  He  writes 
this  complaint  to  comfort  his  heart.  Weland,  Beado- 
hild,  Theodric  knew  care  and  sorrow.  "  That  they 
oven\'ent,  this  also  may  I."  This  is  the  refrain  of  all 
the  verses  of  our  first,  and,  I  may  say,  our  only  early 
English  lyric.  The  Fight  at  Finsburg  is  an  epic  frag- 
ment. It  tells,  and  with  all  the  fire  of  war,  of  the 
attack  on  Fin's  palace  in  Friesland,  and  another  part 
of  the  same  story  is  to  be  found  in  Beowulf.  It  is 
plain  there  was  a  full  Fin-saga,  portions  of  which  were 
sung  at  feasts.  This  completes,  with  those  parts  of 
Beowulf  which  we  may  refer  to  heathen  traditionary 
songs,  the  list  of  the  English  poetry  which  we  may 
possibly  say  belonged  to  the  older  England  over  seas. 
There  are  two  fragments  of  a  romance  of  Waldhere 
of  the  date  or  place  of  which  we  know  nothing.  In 
the  so-called  Rune  •S'^'w^—y  which,  as  we  have  it,  is  not 
old  —  there  is  one  verse  at  least  which  alludes  to  the 
times  of  the   heroic  sagas.     But   the   poems  where  we 


I  EARLY   WRITERS   TO  THE   CONQUEST  9 

find  most  traces  of  early  English  paganism  are  the 
so-called  Charms. 

8.  Beowulf  is  our  old  EngHsh  epic,  and  it  recounts 
the  great  deeds  and  death  of  Beowulf.  It  may  have 
arisen  before  the  English  conquest  of  Britain  in  the 
shape  of  short  songs  about  the  hero,  and  we  can  trace, 
perhaps,  three  different  centres  for  the  story.  The 
scenery  is  laid  among  the  Danes  in  Seeland  and  among 
the  Geats  in  South  Sweden,  on  the  coast  of  the  North 
Sea  and  the  Kattegat.  There  is  not  a  word  about  our 
England  in  the  poem.  Coming  to  England  in  the  form 
of  short  poems,  it  was  wrought  together  into  a  complete 
tale  of  two  parts,  the  first  of  which  we  may  again  divide 
into  two ;  and  was  afterwards  edited,  with  a  few  Chris- 
tian applications,  and  probably  by  a  Northumbrian  poet, 
in  the  eighth  century.     In  this  form  we  possess  it. 

The  story  is  of  Hrothgar,  one  of  the  kingly  race  of 
Jutland,  who  builds  his  hall,  Heorot,  near  the  sea,  on 
the  edge  of  the  moorland.  A  monster  called  Grendel, 
half-human,  half-fiend,  dwells  in  a  sea-cave,  near  the 
moor  over  which  he  wanders  by  night,  and  hating  the 
festive  noise,  carries  off  thirty  of  the  thegns  of  Hrothgar 
and  devours  them.  He  then  haunts  the  hall  at  night, 
and  after  twelve  years  of  this  distress,  Beowulf,  thegn  of 
Hygelac,  sails  from  Sweden  to  bring  help  to  Hrothgar, 
and  at  night,  when  Grendel  breaks  into  the  hall,  wrestles 
with  him,  tears  away  his  arm,  and  the  fiend  flies  away 
to  die.  The  second  division  of  the  first  part  of  the 
poem  begins  with  the  vengeance  taken  by  Grendel's 


lO  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

mother.  She  slays  -^schere,  a  trusty  thegn  of  Hroth- 
gar.  Then  Beowulf  descends  into  her  sea-cave  and 
slays  her  also ;  feasts  in  triumph  with  Hrothgar,  and 
returns  to  his  own  land.  The  second  part  of  the  poem 
opens  fifty  years  later.  Beowulf  is  now  king ;  his  land 
is  happy  under  his  rule.  But  his  fate  is  at  hand.  A 
fire-drake,  who  guards  a  treasure,  is  robbed  and  comes 
from  his  den  to  harry  and  burn  the  country.  The  gray- 
haired  king  goes  forth  to  fight  his  last  fight,  slays  the 
dragon,  but  dies  of  its  fiery  breath,  and  the  poem  closes 
with  the  tale  of  his  burial,  burned  on  a  lofty  pyre  on 
the  top  of  Hronesnses. 

Its  social  interest  lies  in  what  it  tells  us  of  the  man- 
ners and  customs  of  our  forefathers  before  they  came 
to  England.  Their  mode  of  life  in  peace  and  war  is 
described ;  their  ships,  their  towns,  the  scenery  in  which 
they  lived,  their  feasts,  amusements  —  we  have  the  ac- 
count of  a  whole  day  from  morning  to  night  —  the  close 
union  between  the  chieftain  and  his  war-brothers ;  their 
women  and  the  reverence  given  them ;  the  way  in  which 
they  faced  death,  in  which  they  sang,  in  which  they  gave 
gifts  and  rewards.  The  story  is  told  with  Homeric  direct- 
ness and  simplicity,  but  not  with  Homeric  rapidity.  A 
deep  fataUsm  broods  over  it.  "  Wyrd  (the  fate-goddess) 
goes  ever  as  it  must,"  Beowulf  says,  when  he  thinks  he 
may  be  torn  to  pieces  by  Grendel.  "  It  shall  be,"  he 
cries  when  he  goes  to  fight  the  dragon,  "  for  us  in  the 
fight  as  Wyrd  shall  foresee."  But  a  daring  spirit  fills 
the  fatalism.     "  Let  him  who  can,"  he  says, "  gain  honour 


7  EARLY    WRITERS    TO    THE    CONQUEST  II 

ere  he  die."  "  Let  us  have  fame  or  death."  Out  of  the 
fatalism  naturally  grew  the  dignity  and  much  of  the 
pathos  of  the  poem.  It  is  most  poetical  in  the  vivid 
character-drawing  of  men  and  women,  and  especially 
in  the  character  of  the  hero,  both  in  his  youth  and  in 
his  age ;  in  the  fateful  pathos  of  the  old  man's  last 
fight  for  his  country  against  certain  death,  in  the  noble 
scene  of  the  burial,  in  the  versing  of  the  grave  and 
courteous  interchange  of  human  feeling  between  the 
personages.  Moreover,  the  descriptions  of  the  sea  and 
the  voyage,  and  of  the  savage  places  of  the  cliffs  and 
the  moor,  are  instinct  with  the  spirit  which  is  still  alive 
among  our  poetry,  and  which  makes  dreadful  and  lonely 
wildernesses  seem  dwelt  in  —  as  if  the  places  needed  a 
king  —  by  monstrous  beings.  In  the  creation  of  Gren- 
del  and  his  mother,  the  savage  stalkers  of  the  moor, 
that  half-natural,  half-supernatural  world  began,  which, 
when  men  grew  gentler  and  the  country  more  cultivated, 
became  so  beautiful  as  fairyland.  Here  is  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  dwelling-place  of  Grendel :  — 

There  the  land  is  hid  in  gloom, 
Where  they  ward;    wolf-haunted  slopes,  windy  headlands 

o'er  the  sea. 
Fearful  is  the  marish-path,  where  the  mountain  torrent 
'Neath  the  Nesses'  mist,  nither  makes  its  way. 
Under  earth  the  flood  is,  not  afar  from  here  it  lies; 
But  the  measure  of  a  mile,  where  the  mere  is  set. 
Over  it,  outreaching,  hang  the  ice-nipt  trees : 
Held  by  roots  the  holt  is  fast,  and  o'er-helms  the  water. 


12  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAR 

There  an  evil  wonder,  every  night,  a  man  may  see  — 
In  the  flood  a  fire ! 

Not  unhaunted  is  the  place ! 
Thence  the  welter  of  the  waves  is  upwhirled  on  higl^ 
Wan  towards  the  clouds,  when  the  wind  is  stirring 
Wicked  weather  up;   till  the  lift  is  waxing  dark. 
And  the  welkin  weeping ! 

The  whole  poem,  Pagan  as  it  is,  is  English  to  its  very  root. 
It  is  sacred  to  us,  our  Genesis,  the  book  of  our  origins. 

9.  Christianity  and  English  Poetry. — When  we  came 
to  Britain  we  were  great  warriors  and  great  sea  pirates 
—  "  sea  wolves,"  as  a  Roman  poet  calls  us ;  and  all  our 
poetry  down  to  the  present  day  is  full  of  war,  and  still 
more  of  the  sea.  No  nation  has  ever  written  so  much 
sea-poetry.  But  we  were  more  than  mere  warriors.  We 
were  a  home-loving  people  when  we  got  settled  either  in 
Sleswick  or  in  England,  and  all  our  literature  from  the 
first  writings  to  the  last  is  full  of  domestic  love,  the  dear- 
ness  of  home,  and  the  ties  of  kinsfolk.  We  were  a  re- 
ligious people,  even  as  heathen,  still  more  so  when  we 
became  Christian,  and  our  poetry  is  as  much  of  religion 
as  of  war.  But  with  Christianity  a  new  spirit  entered 
into  English  poetry.  The  war  spirit  did  not  decay,  but 
into  the  song  steals  a  softer  element.  The  fatalism  is 
modified  by  the  faith  that  the  fate  is  the  will  of  a  good 
God.  The  sorrow  is  not  less,  but  it  is  reHeved  by  an  on- 
look  of  joy.  The  triumph  over  enemies  is  not  less,  but 
even  more  exulting,  for  it  is  the  triumph  of  God  over  His 
foes  that  is  sung  by  Caedmon  and  Cynewulf.     Nor  is  the 


EARLY   WRITERS   TO   THE   CONQUEST  1 3 

imaginative  delight  in  legends  and  in  the  supernatural 
less.  But  it  is  now  found  in  the  legends  of  the  saints,  in 
the  miracles  and  visions  of  angels  that  Baeda  tells  of  the 
Christian  heroes,  in  fantastic  allegories  of  spiritual  things, 
like  the  poems  of  the  Phoenix  and  the  Whale.  The  love 
of  nature  lasted,  but  it  dwells  now  rather  on  gentle  than 
on  savage  scenery.  The  human  sorrow  for  the  hardness 
of  life  is  more  tender,  and  when  the  poems  speak  of  the 
love  of  home,  it  is  with  an  added  grace.  One  little  bit 
still  lives  for  us  out  of  the  older  world. 

Dear  the  welcomed  one 
To  his  Frisian  wife,  when  his  Floater's  drawn  on  shore, 
When  his  keel  comes  back,  and  her  man  returns  to  home  ; 
Hers,  her  own  food-giver.     And  she  prays  him  in, 
Washes  then  his  weedy  coat,  and  new  weeds  puts  on  him  1 
O  lythe  it  is  on  land  to  him  whom  his  love  constrains. 

If  that  was  the  soft  note  of  home  in  a  Pagan  time,  it 
was  softer  still  when  Christianity  had  mellowed  manners. 
Yet,  with  all  this,  the  ancient  faith  still  influences  the 
Christian  song.  Christ  is  not  only  the  Saviour,  but  the 
Hero  who  goes  forth  against  the  dragon.  His  overthrow 
of  the  fiends  is  described  in  much  the  same  terms  as  that 
of  Beowulf's  wrestling  with  Grendel.  "  Bitterly  grim, 
gripped  them  in  his  wrath."  The  death  of  Christ,  at 
which  the  universe  trembles  and  weeps,  was  mixed  up 
afterwards  with  the  story  of  the  death  of  Balder.  The 
old  poetry  penetrated  the  new,  but  the  spirit  of  the  ni^ 
transformed  that  of  the  old.  w  arlJ 


14  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

lo.  Csedmon. — The  poem  oi  Beowulf  \izs  the  grave 
Teutonic  power,  but  it  is  not,  as  a  whole,  native  to  our 
soil.  It  is  not  the  first  true  English  poem.  That  is  the 
work  of  CiEDMON,  and  it  was  done  in  Northumbria.  The 
story  of  it,  as  told  by  Bseda,  proves  that  the  making  of 
songs  was  common  at  the  time.  Csedmon  was  a  servant 
to  the  monastery  of  Hild,  an  abbess  of  royal  blood,  at 
Whitby  in  Yorkshire.  He  was  somewhat  aged  when  the 
gift  of  song  came  to  him,  and  he  knew  nothing  of  the 
art  of  verse,  so  that  at  the  feasts  when  for  the  sake  of 
mirth  all  sang  in  turn  he  left  the  table.  One  evening, 
having  done  so  and  gone  to  the  stables,  for  he  had  the  care 
of  the  cattle  that  night,  he  fell  asleep,  and  One  came  to 
him  in  vision  and  said,  "  Csedmon,  sing  me  some  song." 
And  he  answered,  "  I  cannot  sing ;  for  this  cause  I  left 
the  feast  and  came  hither."  Then  said  the  other,  "  How- 
ever, you  shall  sing."  "What  shall  I  sing  ?"  he  replied. 
"Sing  the  beginning  of  created  things,"  answered  the 
other.  Whereupon  he  began  to  sing  verses  to  the  praise 
of  God,  and,  awaking,  remembered  what  he  had  sung, 
and  added  more  in  verse  worthy  of  God.  In  the  morn- 
ing he  came  to  the  town-reeve,  and  told  him  of  the  gift 
he  had  received,  and,  being  brought  to  Hild,  was  ordered 
to  tell  his  dream  before  learned  men,  that  they  might 
give  judgment  whence  his  verses  came.  And  when  they 
had  heard,  they  all  said  that  heavenly  grace  had  been 
conferred  on  him  by  our  Lord.  This  story  ought  to  be 
loved  by  us,  for  it  tells  of  the  beginning  in  England  of 
the  wonderful  Ufe  of  English  Poetry.     Nor  should  we 


I  EARLY   WRITERS   TO    THE    CONQUEST  1 5 

fail  to  reverence  the  place  where  it  began.  Above  the 
small  and  land-locked  harbour  of  Whitby  rises  and  juts 
out  towards  the  sea  the  dark  cliff  where  Hild's  monastery 
stood,  looking  out  over  the  German  Ocean.  It  is  a  wild, 
wind-swept  upland,  above  the  furious  sea ;  and  standing 
there  we  feel  that  it  is  a  fitting  birthplace  for  the  poetry 
of  the  sea-ruling  nation.  Nor  is  the  verse  of  the  first 
poet  without  the  stormy  note  of  the  sea-scenery  among 
which  it  was  written,  nor  without  the  love  of  the  stars  and 
the  high  moorlands  that  Caedmon  saw  from  Whitby  Head. 
Caedmon's  poems  were  done  before  680,  in  which  year 
he  died.  Baeda  tells  us  that  he  sang  the  story  of  Genesis 
and  Exodus,  many  other  tales  in  the  Sacred  Scriptures, 
and  the  story  of  Christ  and  the  Apostles  and  of  Heaven 
and  Hell  to  come.  "Others  after  him  tried  to  make 
religious  poems,  but  none  could  compare  with  him  for  he 
learnt  the  art  of  song  not  from  men,  but,  divinely  aided, 
received  that  gift."  It  is  plain  then  that  he  was  the 
founder  of  a  school.  It  is  equally  plain,  it  seems,  from 
this  passage,  that  at  Baeda's  death  the  later  school  of 
religious  poets,  of  whom  Cynewulf  was  the  chief,  had  not 
begun  to  write.  Caedmon's  poems,  then,  were  widely 
known.  Baeda  quotes  their  first  verses.  They  were 
copied  from  monastery  to  monastery.  ^Elfred  got  them 
from  the  north,  and  no  doubt  gave  them  to  the  great 
schools  at  Winchester.  They  were  however  lost.  Only 
their  fame  survived. 

II.  The  Junian  Caedmon. — Archbishop  Ussher,  hunt- 
ing for  books  for  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  found  an  Old 


l6  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

English  MS.  which  Francis  Dujon  (Junius)  printed  in 
Amsterdam  about  1650,  and  published  as  the  work  of 
Csedmon,  because  its  contents  agreed  with  Bseda's  de- 
scription of  Csedmon's  poems  and  of  his  first  hymn. 
Junius  was  a  friend  of  Milton,  and  Milton  was  one  of  the 
first  to  hear  what  the  earliest  English  poet  was  supposed 
to  have  written  on  the  Fall  of  the  Angels  and  the  Fall  of 
Man.  Since  then  critics  have  wrought  their  will  upon 
this  MS.  Some  say  that  Caedmon  did  not  write  a  line  of 
it ;  others  allow  him  some  share  in  it.  It  pleases  us  to 
think,  and  the  judgment  is  possible,  that  the  more 
archaic  portion  of  the  first  poem  in  the  MS.  —  the  Genesis 
—  which  describes  the  Fall  of  the  Angels  and  the  Crea- 
tion, the  Flood,  and  perhaps  the  battle  of  Abraham  with 
the  kings  of  the  East  is  by  Caedmon  himself.  In  the 
midst  of  the  Genesis  there  is  however  a  second  descrip- 
tion of  the  Fall  of  the  Angels  and  an  elaborate  account  of 
the  council  in  Hell,  and  of  the  temptation  in  the  Garden. 
This  is  held  to  be  an  after-insertion,  made  perhaps  in  the 
time  of  Alfred.  It  differs  in  feeling,  in  subtlety,  and  in 
manner  of  verse  from  the  rest.  A  conjecture  was  made 
that  it  was  a  translation  of  a  part  of  an  Old  Saxon  poem, 
and  this  seems  to  be  borne  out  by  the  discovery  in  1894 
of  a  fragment  of  Old  Saxon  poetry  in  which  there  are 
lines  similar  to  those  of  this  separated  portion  of  the 
Genesis.  The  next  poem  in  the  MS.  is  the  Exodus.  It 
is  certainly  not  by  Caedmon.  It  is  not  a  paraphrase ;  it 
is  a  triumphal  poem  of  war,  boldly  invented,  on  the  pas- 
sage of  the  Red  Sea.     The  Daniel,  the  third  poem  of  th^ 


I  EARLY   WRITERS   TO    THE    CONQUEST  1/ 

MS.,  is  so  dull  that  it  is  no  matter  who  wrote  it  or  when 
it  was  written.  The  second  part  of  the  MS.  is  in  a  differ- 
ent handwriting  from  the  first,  and  is  a  series  of  Psalm- 
like poems  on  the  Fall  of  the  Angels,  the  Harrowing  of 
Hell,  the  Resurrection,  Ascension,  Pentecost,  the  Judg- 
ment Day,  and  the  Temptation.  They  are  a  kind  of 
Paradise  Regained. 

12.  The  interest  of  these  poems  is  not  found  in  any 
paraphrase  of  the  Scriptures,  but  in  those  parts  of  them 
which  are  the  invention  of  the  poets,  in  the  drawing  of 
the  characters,  in  the  passages  instinct  with  the  genius  of 
our  race,  and  with  the  individuality  of  the  writers.  The 
account  of  the  creation  in  the  older  Genesis  has  the 
grandeur  of  a  nature-myth.  The  description  of  the  flood 
is  full  of  the  experience  of  one  who  had  known  the  sea  in 
storm.  The  battle  of  Abraham  is  a  fine  clash  of  war,  and 
might  be  the  description  of  the  repulse  by  some  Nor- 
thumbrian king  of  the  northern  tribes.  The  ruin  of  the 
angels  and  the  peace  of  Heaven,  set  in  contrast,  have  the 
same  kind  of  proud  pathos  as  Milton's  work  on  the  same 
subject.  The  later  Genesis  is  even  more  Teutonic  than 
the  first.  Satan's  fierce  cry  of  wrath  and  freedom  against 
God  from  his  bed  of  chains  in  Hell  is  out  of  the  heart  of 
heathendom.  The  northern  rage  of  war  and  the  northern 
tie  of  war-brotherhood  speak  in  all  he  says,  in  all  that  his 
thegns  reply.  The  pleasure  of  the  northern  imagination 
in  swiftness  and  joy  is  just  as  marked  as  its  pleasure  in 
dark  pride  and  in  revenge.  The  burst  of  exulting  ven- 
geance when  the  thegn  of  Satan  succeeds  in  the  tempta' 


1 8  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP 

tion  is  magnificent.  His  master,  he  cries,  will  lie  softly 
and  be  blithe  of  heart  in  the  dusky  fire,  now  that  his 
revenge  is  gained.  There  is  true  dramatic  power  in  the 
dialogue  between  Eve  and  the  fiend,  and  so  much  subtlety 
of  thought  that  it  cannot  belong  to  Caedmon's  time.  It  is 
characteristic  of  Teutonic  manners  that  the  motives  of 
the  woman  for  eating  the  fruit  are  all  good,  and  the  pas- 
sionate and  tender  conscientiousness  of  the  love  and 
repentance  of  Adam  and  Eve  is  equally  characteristic  of 
the  gentler  and  more  religious  side  of  the  Teutonic 
nature.     "Dark  and  true  and  tender  is  the  North." 

The  Exodus  is  remarkable  for  its  descriptions  of  war 
and  a  marching  host,  and  especially  for  the  elaborate 
painting  of  the  breaking  up  of  the  sea,  which  was  prob- 
ably done  by  one  who  had  himself  battled  with  a  whirling 
gale  on  the  German  Ocean.  On  the  whole,  we  have  in 
the  two  parts  of  the  Genesis,  a,nd  in  the  Exodus,  vn  the 
midst  of  spaces  of  dulness,  original  and  imaginative 
pieces  of  poetry  well  worthy  of  the  beginnings  of  English 
song. 

13.  English  in  the  South.  — While  Csedmon  was  still 
alive,  Theodore,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  his  sub- 
deacon  Hadrian  set  up  a  celebrated  school  of  learning  at 
Canterbury,  which  flourished  for  a  short  time  and  then 
decayed.  One  of  Theodore's  scholars  was  Ealdhelm. 
A  young  man  when  Csedmon  died  in  680,  his  name  is 
connected  with  English  poetry.  As  Abbot  of  Malmes- 
bury  and  Bishop  of  Sherborne  he  spread  the  learning  of 
Canterbury  over  the  south  of  England,  and  sent  his  in- 


I  EARLY    WRITERS   TO   THE   CONQUEST  I9 

fluence  into  Northumbria,  where  his  Riddles  were  imi- 
tated by  Cynewulf.  But  our  chief  interest  in  him  is  that 
he  was  himself  an  English  poet.  It  is  said  that  he  had 
not  his  equal  in  the  making  and  singing  of  EngUsh  verse. 
One  of  his  songs  was  popular  in  the  twelfth  century. 
Alfred  had  some  in  his  possession,  and  a  pretty  story 
tells  that  when  the  traders  came  into  the  towns,  Eald- 
helm  used,  like  a  gleeman,  to  stand  on  the  bridge  or  the 
public  way  and  sing  songs  to  them  in  the  English  tongue, 
that  he  might  lure  them  by  the  sweetness  of  his  speech 
to  hear  the  word  of  God. 

14.  English  Poetry  in  the  North  after  Caedmon  — 
"Judith." — We  have  seen  that  English  poetry  began 
with  religion  in  the  poems  of  Csedmon,  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  written  poetry  which  followed  him  is  also 
religious.  One  of  the  best  of  these  pieces  is  Xht  Judith. 
Originally  composed  in  twelve  books,  we  only  possess 
the  three  last  which  tell  of  the  banquet  of  Holofernes, 
his  slaughter,  and  the  attack  of  the  Jews  on  the  Assyrian 
camp.  It  is  a  poem  made  after  Baeda's  death,  full  of 
the  flame  and  joy  of  war.  Nor  is  the  drawing  of  the 
person  and  character  of  Judith  unworthy  of  a  race  which 
has  always  honoured  women.  She  stands  forth  clear, 
a  Jewish  Velleda.  To  call  the  poem,  however,  as  some 
have  done,  the  finest  of  the  Old  English  poems,  is  to 
say  a  great  deal  too  much.  We  may  date,  about  the 
same  time,  in  the  eighth  century,  a  fine  fragment  on  the 
Harrowing  of  Hell,  some  poems  on  Christian  legends, 
perhaps  the  allegorical  poems  of  the   WJiale  and  the 


to  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

PantheVy  and  some  lyrical  translations  of  the  Psalms  in 
the  Kentish  and  West  Saxon  dialects. 

15.  There  are  five  Elegies  in  the  Exeter  Book,  which 
from  their  excellence  deserve  to  be  isolated  from  the 
rest  of  the  minor  poems.  The  first  of  these  has  been 
called  the  Ruin.  It  is  the  mourning  of  a  traveller  over 
a  desolated  city,  and  certain  phrases  in  it  seem  to  show 
that  the  city  was  Bath,  utterly  overthrown  by  Ceawlin 
in  577.  If  so,  the  date  of  the  poem  may  be  between 
676  when  Osric  founded  a  monastery  among  the  ruins, 
and  781  when  Offa  rebuilt  the  town.  The  second,  the 
Wanderer,  expands  the  mourning  "  motive  "  of  the  Ruin 
over  the  desolation  of  the  whole  world  of  man.  It  may 
have  been  originally  a  heathen  poem,  edited  afterwards 
with  a  Christian  Prologue  and  Epilogue.  Of  all  the  Old 
English  poems  it  is  the  most  of  an  artistic  whole,  and  a 
noble  piece  of  work  it  is.  In  its  grave  and  fateful  verse 
an  exile  bewails  his  own  lost  happiness  and  the  sorrow- 
ful fates  of  men.  The  third,  the  Seafarer,  apparently 
a  dialogue  between  an  old  and  a  young  sailor  about  the 
dangers  and  the  fascination  of  the  sea,  breathes  the 
spirit  which  filled  the  heart  of  our  forefathers  while  they 
sang  and  sailed,  and  is  extraordinarily  modem  in  note. 
The  blank-verse  manner  of  Tennyson  is  in  it,  and  the 
spirit  of  it  is  strangely  re-echoed  in  the  Sailor  Boy. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  the  two  other  elegies  —  the 
Wife's  Complaint  and  the  Husband's  Message.  They 
are  not  of  so  fine  a  quality  as  the  Wanderer  or  the 
Seafarer,  but  they  both  have    love-passion,  otherwise 


1  EARLY   WRITERS   TO   THE   CONQUEST  21 

unrepresented  in  Old  English  poetry.  To  these  must  be 
added  the  dramatic  monologue,  formerly  regarded  as 
the  First  Riddle.  As  recently  interpreted,  it  should 
be  known  as  Wulf  and  Eadwacer. 

1 6.  Cynewulf  was  the  greatest  of  the  northern  singers, 
and  wrote,  most  people  think,  during  the  latter  half  of 
the  eighth  century.  His  name  is  known  to  us,  and  he 
is  the  only  one  of  these  poets  of  whose  personality  and 
life  we  have  some  clear  image,  and  whose  work  is  so 
wide  in  range  and  so  varying  in  quality  that  it  may  be 
divided  into  periods.  He  has  signed  his  name  in  its 
runic  letters  to  four  of  his  poems.  The  riddling  com- 
mentary he  linked  on  to  the  runes  gives  some  account 
of  his  life,  and  the  poems  are  throughout  as  personal 
as  Milton's.  He  was  often  a  wandering  singer,  but 
seems  to  have  had,  in  his  youth,  a  fixed  place  at  the 
court  of  some  northern  noble  —  a  wild  and  gay  young 
man,  a  rider,  a  singer  at  the  feasts,  fond  of  sports  and 
war,  indifferent  to  reUgion,  sensitive  to  love  and  beauty, 
and  at  home  with  all  classes  of  men.  It  must  have  been 
during  this  time  that  he  wrote  the  greater  number  of 
the  Riddles.  They  prove  that  he  had  a  poet's  sympathy 
with  the  life  of  man  and  nature.  They  are  written  by 
one  who  knew  the  sea  and  its  dangers,  the  iron  coasts 
and  storms  of  Northumbria,  who  knew  and  had  taken 
part  in  war,  who  knew  the  forest-land,  the  scattered 
villages  and  their  daily  life ;  who  loved  the  wild  animals 
and  the  birds,  and  who,  strange  to  say  at  this  early  time, 
wrote  about  nature  with  an  observant  and  loving  eye 


22  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

and  in  a  way  we  do  not  meet  again  in  English  poetry 
for  many  centuries.  The  poem  on  the  Hurricane  is 
an  artistic  whole,  and  may  not  be  unjustly  compared 
with  Shelley's  Ode  to  the  West  Wind.  There  is  scarcely 
a  trace  of  Christianity  in  these  early  poems.  Trouble 
then  fell  on  Cynewulf,  and  with  it  repentance  for  his 
"sinful  life,"  and  he  tells  in  the  Dream  of  the  Rood 
of  how  comfort  was  brought  to  him  at  last.  He  then 
turned  to  write  religious  poems,  and  to  this  part  of  his 
life  we  may  allot  iht  Juliana,  and  perhaps  the  first  part 
of  the  Gudlac.  He  then  wrote,  and  with  a  far  higher 
art,  the  Crist,  a  long,  almost  an  epical,  poem  of  the 
Incarnation,  the  Descent  into  Hell,  the  Ascension,  and 
the  Last  Judgment,  a  noble  and  continuous  effort,  full 
of  triumphant  verse.  He  had  now  reached  full  peace 
of  mind,  and  as  much  mastery  over  his  art  as  was  pos- 
sible at  that  early  time.  He  may  then  have  composed, 
from  a  poem  now  given  to  Lactantius,  the  allegorical 
poem  of  the  Phoenix,  in  which  there  is  a  famous  passage 
describing  the  sinless  land;  the  second  part  of  the 
Gudlac,  as  fine  as  the  first  is  poor;  and  still  later  on 
in  life,  and  with  a  free  recurrence  to  the  war-poetry 
of  heathendom,  the  Elene  and  the  Andreas,  the  first, 
the  finding  of  the  True  Cross  by  the  Empress  Helena, 
and  remarkable  for  its  battle-fervour ;  the  second  equally 
remarkable  for  its  imaginative  treatment  of  the  voyage 
of  St.  Andrew  for  the  conversion  of  the  Marmedonians. 
Then,  before  he  died,  and  to  leave  his  last  message 
to  his  folk,  he  wrote,  using  perhaps  part  of  an  older 


I  EARLY   WRITERS   TO   THE    CONQUEST  2$ 

poem,  the  Dream  of  the  Holy  Rood,  and  showed  that 
even  in  his  old  age  his  imagination  and  his  versing  were 
as  vivid  as  in  his  youth. 

17.  Poetry  during  and  after  i£lf red's  Reign.  —  When 
Alfred  set  up  learning  afresh  in  the  south,  it  had  perished 
in  Northumbria.  But  no  great  poetry  arose  in  the  south. 
There  was  alliterative  versing,  but  it  had  neither  imagina- 
tion, originality,  nor  music.  The  EngUsh  alliterative  ver- 
sion of  the  Metra  of  Boethius  may  be  Alfred's  own ;  if 
so,  he  was  plainly  not  a  poet.  The  second  part  of  the 
Genesis  may  belong  to  this  time,  but  it  is  asserted  now 
to  be  a  translation.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  last  poems 
in  the  Csedmonic  MS.  are  of  this  time,  but  of  the  Nor- 
thumbrian School.  It  was  a  time,  however,  of  collections 
of  the  poetry  of  the  past.  Nearly  all  the  Old  English 
poetry,  as  we  have  it,  is  in  the  West-Saxon  Dialect. 
.Alfred  had  a  Handbook,  into  which,  tradition  says,  he 
copied  some  English  songs.  It  is  extremely  likely  that 
the  poems  in  the  Exeter  Book  were  brought  together  in 
<Elfred's  time.  In  that  book  itself  there  are  gnomic  and 
didactic  poems,  as,  for  example,  the  Fates  of  Men  and 
the  Gifts  of  Men,  which  are  collections  of  short  verses 
belonging  to  various  times,  and  some  of  them  are  very 
old.  At  a  later  period  than  Alfred's  reign,  these  gnomic 
verses  took  the  form  of  dialogues,  partly  in  prose  and 
partly  in  verse,  and  we  have  two  incomplete  specimens 
of  this  in  the  Solomon  and  Saturnus,  in  which  a  Judaic 
legend  is  curiously  mingled  with  Teutonic  forms  of 
thought     To  the  same  period   may  be  allotted   the 


94  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Menologium^  a  poetical  calendar,  the  best  portions  of 
which  seem  borrowed  from  the  past.  The  rest  of  the 
verse  up  to  the  Conquest  is  chiefly  made  up  of  allitera- 
tive sermons  and  the  war  songs. 

1 8.  The  War-poetry  was  probably  always  as  plentiful 
as  the  religious,  but  was  not  likely  to  be  written  down 
by  the  monks.  When,  however,  Alfred  developed  the 
Chronicle  into  a  national  history,  the  writers  seized  on 
popular  songs,  and  inserted  them  in  the  Chronicle.  In 
that  way  we  have  at  least  one  fine  war-poem  handed 
down  to  us — The  Song  of  Brunanburh,  937.  It  de- 
scribes the  fight  of  Eling  -^thelstan  with  Anlaf  the  Dane 
and  the  Scots  under  Constantine.  Another  war-poem  is 
the  Fight  at  Maldon,  the  story  of  the  death  of  Byrhtnoth, 
an  East  Saxon  Ealdorman,  in  battle  with  a  band  of  Vik- 
ings. They  are  the  fitting  source,  in  their  simplicity  and 
patriotism,  of  such  war-songs  as  the  Battle  of  the  Baltic 
and  the  Siege  of  Lucknow.  Of  the  two  the  Fight  at 
Maldon  is  the  finer,  the  most  human  and  varied,  but  the 
Song  of  Brunanburh  is  lyrical  as  the  latter  is  not.  They 
are  two  different  types  of  poetry.  Both  of  them  have 
some  Norse  feeling,  and  we  may  link  with  them  from  this 
point  of  view  the  Rhyme  Song,  which  recalls  the  motive 
and  spirit  of  the  earlier  Ruin,  but  which,  having  rhymes 
along  with  alliteration,  resembles  the  Scandinavian  form 
called  Runhenda,  and  has  induced  critics  to  attribute  it 
to  the  influence  of  the  warrior  and  scald,  Egil  Skala- 
grimsson,  who  twice  visited  King  ^thelstan.  Two  frag- 
mentary odes,  among  some  other  short  poems,  inserted 


1  EARLY   WRITERS   TO   THE    CONQUEST  2$ 

in  the  Chronicle,  one  on  the  deliverance  of  the  five  cities 
from  the  Danes  by  King  Eadmund,  942 ;  and  another 
on  the  coronation  of  King  Eadgar,  are  the  last  records 
of  a  war-poetry  which  naturally  decayed  when  the  Eng- 
lish were  trodden  down  by  the  Normans.  When  Taille- 
fer  rode  into  battle  at  Hastings,  singing  songs  of  Roland 
and  Charlemagne,  he  sang  more  than  the  triumph  of  the 
Norman  over  the  English  -,  he  sang  the  victory  for  a  time 
of  French  Romance  over  Old  English  poetry. 

19.  Old  English  Prose.  —  It  is  pleasant  to  think  that 
we  may  not  unfairly  make  English  prose  begin  with 
B^DA.  He  was  born  about  673,  and  was  like  Csdmon, 
a  Northumbrian.  After  683,  he  spent  his  life  at  Jarrow, 
"in  the  same  monastery,"  he  says,  "and  while  attentive 
to  the  rule  of  mine  order,  and  the  service  of  the  Church, 
my  constant  pleasure  lay  in  learning,  or  teaching,  or 
writing."  He  enjoyed  that  pleasure  for  many  years,  for 
his  quiet  life  was  long,  and  his  toil  unceasing.  Forty- 
five  works  prove  his  industry;  and  their  fame  over  the 
whole  of  learned  Europe  proves  their  value.  His  learn- 
ing was  as  various  as  it  was  great.  All  that  the  world 
then  knew  of  theology,  science,  music,  rhetoric,  medi- 
cine, arithmetic,  astronomy,  and  physics  was  brought 
together  by  him ;  his  Ecclesiastical  History  is  our  best 
authority  for  Early  England ;  accuracy  and  delightful- 
ness  are  at  one  in  it.  It  reveals  his  charming  character ; 
and  indeed,  his  life  was  as  gentle,  and  himself  as  loved, 
as  his  work  was  great.  His  books  were  written  in  Latin, 
and  with  these  we  have  nothing  to  do,  but  he  strove  to 


26  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

make  English  prose  a  literary  language,  for  his  last  work 
was  a  Translation  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John,  as  almost 
his  last  words  were  in  English  verse.  In  the  story  of  his 
death  told  by  his  disciple  Cuthbert  is  the  first  record 
of  English  prose  writing.  When  the  last  day  came,  the 
dying  man  called  his  scholars  to  him  that  he  might 
dictate  more  of  his  translation.  "  There  is  still  a  chap- 
ter wanting,"  said  the  scribe,  "and  it  is  hard  for  thee 
to  question  thyself  longer."  "It  is  easily  done,"  said 
Bseda,  "  take  thy  pen  and  write  swiftly."  Through  the 
day  they  wrote,  and  when  evening  fell,  "  There  is  yet  one 
sentence  unwritten,  dear  master,"  said  the  youth.  "  Write 
it  quickly,"  said  the  master.  "It  is  finished  now." 
"  Thou  sayest  true,"  was  the  reply,  "  all  is  finished  now." 
He  sang  the  "  Glory  to  God  "  and  died.  It  is  to  that 
scene  that  EngUsh  prose  looks  back  as  its  sacred  source, 
as  it  is  in  the  greatness  and  variety  of  Bseda's  Latin  work 
that  English  scholarship  strikes  its  key-note. 

When  Bseda  died,  Northumbria  was  the  centre  of 
European  literature.  Wilfrid  of  York  had  founded  libra- 
ries and  monasteries,  but  the  true  beginner  of  all  the 
Northumbrian  learning  was  Benedict  Biscop,  who  col- 
lected two  brother  libraries  at  Wearmouth  and  Jarrow, 
and  whose  scholars  were  Ceolfrid  and  Bseda.  Six  hun- 
dred scholars  gathered  round  Bseda,  and  he  handed  on 
all  his  learning  to  his  pupil  Ecgberht,  who  as  Archbishop 
of  York  established  the  famous  library,  and  founded  the 
great  school,  or,  as  it  may  be  called,  the  University  of 
York.    To  this  place,  for  more   than  sixty  years,  all 


I  EARLY    WRITERS    TO   THE    CONQUEST  2/ 

Europe  sent  pupils  to  win  the  honey  of  learning.  Al- 
cuin,  Ecgberht's  pupil,  finally  took  with  him  to  the  court 
of  Charles  the  Great,  in  792,  all  the  knowledge  which 
Eseda  had  won  and  the  School  of  York  had  expanded. 
Through  Alcuin  then,  whom  we  may  call  Charles's  Min- 
ister of  Education,  England  was  the  source  of  the  new 
education  which  slowly  spread  over  the  vast  sphere  of 
the  Prankish  Empire.  This  was  done  just  at  the  right 
moment,  for  Alcuin  had  scarce  left  the  English  shores 
for  the  last  time  when  the  Danes  descended  on  Nor- 
thumbria,  and  blotted  out  the  whole  of  its  literature  and 
learning. 

20.  iElfred Though  the  long  battle  with  the  in- 
vaders was  lost  in  the  north,  it  was  gained  for  a  time  by 
u^Elfred  the  Great  in  Wessex ;  and  with  Alfred's  literary 
work,  learning  changed  its  seat  from  the  north  to  the 
south.  Alfred's  writings  and  translations,  being  in  Eng- 
lish and  not  in  Latin,  make  him,  since  Bseda's  work  is 
lost,  the  true  father  of  English  prose.  As  Whitby  is  the 
cradle  of  English  poetry,  so  is  Winchester  of  English 
prose.  At  Winchester  the  king  took  the  English  tongue 
and  made  it  the  tongue  in  which  history,  philosophy, 
law,  and  religion  spoke  to  the  English  people.  No  work 
was  ever  done  more  eagerly  or  more  practically.  He 
brought  scholars  from  different  parts  of  the  world.  He 
set  up  schools  in  his  monasteries  "  where  every  free-bom 
youth,  who  has  the  means,  shall  attend  to  his  book  till 
he  can  read  English  writing  perfectly."  He  presided 
over  a  school  in  his  own  court.      He  made  himself  a 


28  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

master  of  a  literary  English  style,  and  he  did  this  that 
he  might  teach  his  people.  He  translated  the  popular 
manuals  of  the  time  into  English,  but  he  edited  them 
with  large  additions  of  his  own,  needful  as  he  thought, 
for  English  use.  He  gave  his  nation  moral  philosophy 
in  Boethius's  Consolation  of  Philosophy ;  a  universal  his- 
tory, with  geographical  chapters  of  his  own,  "of  the 
highest  literary  and  philological  value  as  specimens  of  his 
natural  prose,"  in  his  translation  of  Orosius ;  an  ecclesi- 
astical history  of  England  in  Baeda's  History,  giving  to 
some  details  a  West-Saxon  form ;  and  a  religious  hand- 
book, with  a  preface  of  his  own,  in  the  Pastoral  Rule  of 
Pope  Gregory.  He  induced  Bishop  Werferth  to  translate 
into  English  the  Dialogues  of  Gregory,  a  book  which  had 
a  far-reaching  influence  on  mediaeval  literature  and  the- 
ology. We  do  not  quite  know  whether  he  worked  him- 
self at  the  English  or  Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,  but  at 
least  it  was  in  his  reign  that  this  chronicle  rose  out  of 
meagre  lists  into  a  full  narrative  of  events.  To  him, 
then,  we  English  look  back  as  the  fountain  of  English 
prose  literature. 

21.  The  Later  Old  English  Prose. — The  impulse  he 
gave  soon  died  away,  but  it  was  revived  under  King  Ead- 
gar  the  Peaceful,  whose  seventeen  years  of  government 
(958-75)  were  the  most  prosperous  and  glorious  of  the 
West-Saxon  Empire.  Under  him  and  his  predecessors, 
^thelwold,  Bishop  of  Winchester,  founded  and  kept  up 
English  schools,  and,  working  together  with  Archbishop 
Dunstan  and  Oswald  of  Worcester,  recreated  monastic 


I  EARLY  WRITERS   TO  THE   CONQUEST  29 

life,  classic  learning,  and  the  education  of  the  clergy. 
Their  labours  were  the  origin  of  the  famous  Blickling 
Homilies,  971.  About  twenty  years  after,  -^Ifric,  called 
"  Grammaticus "  from  his  Enghshed  Latin  Grammar, 
began  to  write.  He  turned  into  English  the  Pentateuch, 
Joshua,  and  part  of  Job.  The  rest  of  his  numerous 
works  are  some  of  the  best  models  we  possess  of  the 
literary  English  of  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century. 
The  two  collections  of  Homilies  we  owe  to  him,  and 
his  Lives  of  the  Saints,  are  written  in  a  classic  prose, 
and  his  Glossary  and  Colloquy,  afterwards  edited  by 
./Elfric  Bata,  served  for  a  kind  of  EngHsh- Latin  text- 
book. His  prose  in  his  later  life  was  somewhat  spoiled 
by  his  over- mastering  fancy  for  alliteration,  but  he  is 
always  a  clear  and  forcible  writer  of  English.  But  this 
revival  had  no  sooner  begun  to  take  root  than  the  North- 
men came  again  in  force  upon  the  land  and  conquered  it. 
We  have  in  Wulfstan's  (Archbishop  of  York,  1002-23) 
Address  to  the  English,  a  terrible  picture,  written  in  im- 
passioned prose,  of  the  demoralisation  caused  by  the  in- 
roads of  the  Danes.  During  the  fresh  interweaving  of 
Danes  and  English  together  under  Danish  kings  from 
1013  to  1042,  no  English  literature  arose,  but  Latin  prose 
intruded  more  and  more  on  English  writing.  It  was 
towards  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Confessor  that  EngHsh 
writing  again  began  to  live.  But  no  sooner  was  it  born 
than  the  Norman  invasion  repressed,  but  did  not  quench 
its  Ufe. 

22.  The  English  Chronicle.  —  One  great  monument. 


30  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

however,  of  Old  English  prose  lasts  beyond  the  Conquest. 
It  is  the  English  Chronicle,  and  in  it  our  literature  is 
continuous  from  Alfred  to  Stephen.  At  first  it  was 
nothing  but  a  record  of  the  births  and  deaths  of  bishops 
and  kings,  and  was  probably  a  West-Saxon  Chronicle. 
Among  these  short  notices  there  is,  however,  one  tragic 
story,  of  Cynewulf  and  Cyneheard,  under  the  date  755 
—  but  the  true  date  is  784  —  so  rude  in  style,  and  so  cir- 
cumstantial, that  it  is  probably  contemporary  with  the 
events  themselves.  If  so,  it  is  the  oldest  piece  of  histori- 
cal prose  in  any  Teutonic  tongue.  More  than  a  hundred 
years  later  Alfred  took  up  the  Chronicle,  caused  it  to 
be  edited  from  various  sources,  added  largely  to  it  from 
Baeda,  and  raised  it  to  the  dignity  of  a  national  his- 
tory. The  narrative  of  Alfred's  wars  with  the  Danes, 
written,  it  is  likely,  by  himself  at  the  end  of  his  reign, 
enables  us  to  estimate  the  great  weight  Alfred  himself 
had  in  literature.  "Compared  with  this  passage,"  says 
Professor  Earle,  "  every  other  piece  of  prose,  not  in  these 
Chronicles  merely,  but  throughout  the  whole  range  of  ex- 
tant Saxon  literature,  must  assume  a  secondary  rank." 
After  iElfred's  reign,  and  that  of  his  son  Eadward,  901-25, 
the  Chronicle  becomes  scanty,  but  songs  and  odes  are  in- 
serted in  it.  In  the  reign  of  ^Ethelred  and  during  the 
Danish  kings  its  fulness  returns,  and  growing  by  additions 
from  various  quarters,  it  continues  to  be  our  great  contem- 
porary authority  in  English  history  till  1154,  when  it 
abruptly  closes  with  the  death  of  Stephen.  "  It  is  the  first 
history  of  any  Teutonic  people  in  their  own  language ;  it 


1  EARLY  WRITERS  TO   THE  CONQUEST  3 1 

is  the  earliest  and  most  venerable  monument  of  English 
prose."  In  it  Old  English  poetry  sang  its  last  extant 
song,  in  its  death  Old  English  prose  dies.  It  is  not  till 
the  reign  of  John  that  EngUsh  poetry,  in  any  form  but 
that  of  short  poems,  appears  again  in  the  Brut  of  Laya- 
mon.  It  is  not  till  the  reign  of  Henry  III.  that  original 
English  prose  begins  again  in  the  Ancren  Riwle  (the 
Rule  of  Anchoresses),  in  the  Wooing  of  our  Lord,  and  in 
the  charming  homily  entitled  the  SawUs  Warde, 


32  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 


CHAPTER  n 

FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER'S  DEATH,  IO66-I4OO 

23.  General  Outline.  —  The  invasion  of  Britain  by  the 
English  made  the  island,  its  speech,  and  its  literature, 
English.  The  invasion  of  England  by  the  Danes  left  our 
speech  and  literature  still  English.  The  Danes  were  of 
our  stock  and  tongue,  and  we  absorbed  them.  The  in- 
vasion of  England  by  the  Normans  seemed  likely  to  crush 
the  English  people,  to  root  out  their  Uterature,  and  even 
to  threaten  their  speech.  But  that  which  happened  to 
the  Danes  happened  to  the  Normans  also,  and  for  the 
same  reason.  They  were  originally  of  like  blood  to  the 
English,  and  of  like  speech ;  and  though  during  their 
settlement  in  Normandy  they  had  become  French  in 
manner  and  language,  and  their  literature  French,  yet 
the  old  blood  prevailed  in  the  end.  The  Norman  felt 
his  kindred  with  the  English  tongue  and  spirit,  became 
an  Englishman,  and  left  the  French  tongue  that  he  might 
speak  and  write  in  English.  We  absorbed  the  Normans, 
and  we  took  into  our  literature  and  speech  the  French 
elements  they  had  brought  with  them.  It  was  a  process 
slower  in  literature  than  it  was  in  the  political  history, 


n      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      33 

but  it  began  from  the  political  struggle.  Up  to  the  time 
of  Henry  II.  the  Norman  troubled  himself  but  little  about 
the  English  tongue.  But  when  French  foreigners  came 
pouring  into  the  land  in  the  train  of  Henry  and  his  sons 
the  Norman  allied  himself  with  the  Englishman  against 
these  foreigners,  and  the  English  tongue  began  to  rise  into 
importance.  Its  literature  grew  slowly,  but  as  quickly 
as  most  of  the  literatures  of  Europe.  Moreover  it  never 
quite  ceased.  We  are  carried  on  to  the  year  11 54  by  the 
prose  of  the  English  Chronicle.  There  are  traces  in  the 
Norman  Chroniclers  of  the  use  they  made  of  lost  Eng- 
lish war-songs.  There  are  Old  English  homilies  which 
we  may  date  from  11 20.  The  so-called  Moral  Ode,  an 
English  rhyming  poem,  was  compiled  about  the  year  1 170. 
It  made  almost  a  school ;  it  gave  rise  to  some  impassioned 
poems  to  the  Virgin,  and  it  is  found  in  a  volume  of  hom- 
ilies of  the  same  date.  In  the  reign  of  Henry  II.,  the 
old  Southern- English  Gospels  of  King  ^thelred's  time 
were  modernised  after  200  years  or  less  of  use.  The 
Sayings  of  Alfred,  written  in  English  for  the  English, 
were  composed  about  the  year  1200.  About  the  same 
date  the  Old  English  Charters  of  Bury  St.  Edmunds  were 
translated  into  the  dialect  of  the  shire,  and  now,  early  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  at  the  central  time  of  the  strife 
between  EngUsh  and  foreign  elements,  after  the  death  of 
Richard  I.,  the  Brut  of  Layamon  and  the  Orrmulum 
come  forth  within  ten  years  of  each  other  to  prove  the 
continuity,  the  survival,  and  the  victory  of  the  English 
tongue.     When  the  patriotic  struggle  closed  in  the  reign 


34  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

of  Edward  I.,  English  literature  had  again  risen,  through 
the  song,  the  religious  poems,  the  alliterative  romance 
and  homily,  the  lives  of  saints  and  the  translations  of 
French  romances,  into  importance,  and  was  written  by  a 
people  made  up  of  Norman  and  Englishman  welded  into 
one  by  the  fight  against  the  French  foreigner.  But 
though  the  foreigner  was  driven  out,  his  literature  influ- 
enced, and  continued  to  influence,  the  new  English 
poetry,  for  in  this  revival  our  literature  was  chiefly  poet- 
ical. Prose,  with  but  few  exceptions,  was  still  written 
in  Latin. 

24.  Religious  and  Story-telling  Poetry  are  the  two 
main  streams  into  which  this  poetical  literature  divides 
itself.  The  religious  poetry  is  for  the  most  part  English 
in  spirit,  and  a  poetry  of  the  people,  from  the  Orrmu- 
lum,  about  12 15,  to  Piers  Plowman,  in  which  poem  the 
distinctly  English  poetry  reached  its  truest  expression  in 
1362.  The  story-telling  poetry  may  be  called  English  at 
its  beginning  in  the  Brut  of  Layamon,  but  becomes  more 
and  more  influenced  by  the  romantic  poetry  of  France, 
and  in  the  end  grows  in  Chaucer's  hands  into  a  poetry 
of  the  court  and  of  fine  allegory,  a  literary  in  contrast 
with  a  popular  poetry.  But  Chaucer,  at  first  thus  influ- 
enced by  French  and  then  by  Italian  subjects,  becomes 
at  last  entirely  English  in  feeling  and  in  subjects,  and  the 
Canterbury  Tales  are  the  best  example  of  English  story- 
telling we  possess.  The  struggle  then  of  England  against 
the  foreigner  to  become  and  remain  England  finds  its 
parallel  in  the  struggle  of  English  poetry  against  the 


n       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      35 

influence  of  foreign  poetry  to  become  and  remain  English. 
Both  struggles  were  long  and  varied,  but  in  both  Eng- 
land was  triumphant.  She  became  a  nation,  and  she  won 
a  national  literature.  It  is  the  course  of  this  struggle 
we  have  now  to  trace  along  the  two  lines  already  laid 
down — the  poetry  of  religion  and  the  poetry  of  story- 
telling; but  to  do  so  we  must  begin  in  both  instances 
with  the  Norman  Conquest. 

25.  The  Religious  Poetry. — The  reUgious  revival  of 
the  eleventh  century  was  strongly  felt  in  Normandy,  and 
both  the  knights  and  Churchmen  who  came  to  England 
with  William  the  Conqueror  and  during  his  son's  reign, 
were  founders  of  abbeys,  from  which,  as  centres  of  learn- 
ing and  charity,  the  country  was  civilised.  Where  Lan- 
franc  and  Anselm  lived,  religion  or  scholastic  learning 
was  not  likely  to  go  to  sleep.  A  frequent  communica- 
tion was  kept  up  with  French  scholarship  through  the 
University  of  Paris.  Schools  and  libraries  multipHed. 
The  Latin  learning  of  England  steadily  developed.  Its 
scholars  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  wrote 
not  only  on  theology,  but  on  many  various  subjects; 
and  some  of  their  books  influenced  the  whole  of  Euro- 
pean thought.  In  Henry  I.'s  reign  the  reUgion  of 
England  was  further  quickened  by  missionary  monks 
sent  by  Bernard  of  Clairvaux.  London  was  stirred  to 
rebuild  St.  Paul's,  and  abbeys  rose  in  all  the  well- 
watered  valleys  of  the  north.  Thus  the  English  citi- 
zens of  London  and  the  English  peasants  in  the  country 
received  a  new  religious  life  from  the  foreign  noble  and 


36  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  foreign  monk,  and  both  were  drawn  together  through 
a  common  worship.  When  this  took  place  a  desire  arose 
for  religious  handbooks  in  the  English  tongue.  Orrmin's 
Orrmulum  may  be  taken  as  a  type  of  these.  We  may 
date  it,  though  not  precisely,  at  12 15,  the  date  of  the 
Great  Charter.  It  is  EngUsh;  its  sources  are  yElfric 
and  Bseda;  its  Danish  writer  loves  his  native  dialect; 
not  five  French  words  are  to  be  found  in  it.  It  is  a 
metrical  version  of  the  Gospel  of  each  day  with  the 
addition  of  a  sermon  in  verse.  "  This  book  is  named 
Orrmulum  for  that  Orrm  it  wrought."  It  marks  the 
rise  of  English  religious  literature,  and  its  religion  is 
simple  and  rustic.  Orrm's  ideal  monk  is  "  a  very  pure 
man,  and  altogether  without  property,  except  that  he 
shall  be  found  in  simple  meat  and  clothes."  He  will 
have  "a  hard  and  stiff  and  rough  and  heavy  life  to 
lead.  All  his  heart  and  desire  ought  to  be  aye  toward 
heaven,  and  to  serve  his  Master  well."  This  was  Eng- 
lish religion  in  the  country  at  this  date.  It  was  con- 
tinued in  English  prose  writing  by  the  Ancren  Riwle  — 
the  Rule  of  the  Anchoresses  —  written  about  1220.  The 
original  MS.  was  probably  in  the  Dorsetshire  dialect. 
The  Genesis  and  then  the  Exodus,  biblical  poems  of 
about  1250,  were  made  by  the  pious  writers  to  make 
Christian  men  as  glad  as  birds  at  the  dawning  for  the 
story  of  salvation.  A  Northumbrian  Psalter  of  1250 
is  only  one  example  out  of  many  devotional  pieces, 
homilies,  metrical  creeds,  hymns  to  the  Virgin  (mostly 
imitated  firom  the  French),  which,  with  the  metrical 


n      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      37 

Lives  of  the  Saints  (a  large  volume,  the  lives  translated 
from  Latin  or  French  prose  into  English  verse),  carry 
the  religious  poetry  up  to  1300.  Among  these  the 
most  important  are  the  lives  of  three  saints,  Marherete, 
Juliane,  and  Katerine,  and  the  homily  on  Hali  Meiden- 
had  (Holy  Maidenhood)  all  in  alliterative  verse,  written 
in  southern  England,  and  beginning  a  new  and  vital 
class  of  poetry,  the  poetry  of  impassioned  love  to 
Christ  and  the  Virgin. 

26.  Literature  and  the  Friars.  —  There  was  little 
religion  in  the  towns,  but  this  was  soon  changed.  In 
1 22 1  the  Mendicant  Friars  came  to  England,  and  they 
chose  the  towns  for  their  work.  The  first  Friars  who 
learnt  English  that  they  might  preach  to  the  people 
were  foreigners,  and  spoke  French.  Many  English 
Friars  studied  in  Paris,  and  came  back  to  England, 
able  to  talk  to  Norman  noble  and  English  peasant. 
Their  influence,  exercised  both  on  Norman  and  Eng- 
lish, was  thus  a  mediatory  and  uniting  one,  and  Normans 
as  well  as  English  now  began  to  write  religious  works  in 
English.  The  people,  of  course,  had  to  be  served  with 
stories,  and  in  the  early  years  of  the  fourteenth  century 
a  number  of  Christian  legends  of  the  childhood  of  Jesus, 
of  the  Virgin,  the  Apostles  and  Saints,  and  of  miracles, 
chiefly  drawn  from  the  French,  were  put  into  varying 
poetic  forms ;  and,  recited  everywhere,  added  a  large 
number  of  materials  to  the  imagination  of  England.  A 
legend-cycle  was  thus  formed,  and  this  cycle  was  chiefly 
made  by  writers   in   the  south  of  England.     In   1303 


38  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Robert  Mannyng  of  Brunne,  in  Lincolnshire,  freely 
translated,  to  please  plain  people,  a  French  work,  the 
Manual  of  Sins  (written  thirty  years  earUer  by  William 
of  Waddington),  under  the  title  of  Handlyng  Synne. 
William  of  Shoreham  translated  the  whole  of  the  Psalter 
into  English  prose  about  1327,  and  wrote  poems  which 
might  be  called  treatises  in  rhyme.  The  Cursor  Mundi, 
written  about  1320,  in  Northumbria,  and  thought  "  the 
best  book  of  all "  by  men  of  that  time,  was  a  metrical 
recast  of  the  history  of  the  Old  and  New  Testament, 
interspersed,  as  was  the  Handlyng  Synne,  with  legends 
of  saints.  This  book  started  a  whole  series  of  verse- 
homilies  tagged  with  tales,  which  created  in  northern 
England  a  legend-cycle  similar  to  that  created  in  the 
south.  Some  scattered  Sermons,  and  in  1340  the 
Ayenbite  of  Inwyt  (the  Sting  of  Conscience),  translated 
from  the  French,  mark  how  English  prose  was  rising 
through  religion.  About  the  same  year  Richard  RoUe, 
the  Hermit  of  Hampole,  wrote  in  Latin  and  in  Nor- 
thumbrian English  for  the  "unlearned,"  a  poem  called 
the  Pricke  of  Conscience.  This  poem  is  the  last  dis- 
tinctly reUgious  poem  of  any  importance  before  the 
Vision  of  Piers  Plowman,  unless  we  are  led  to  except 
those  written  by  the  author  of  The  Grene  Knight  At 
its  date,  1340,  the  religious  influence  of  the  Friars  was 
swiftly  decaying.  In  Piers  Plowman  their  influence  for 
good  is  gone.  In  that  poem,  which  brings  religious 
poetry,  in  the  death  of  its  author,  up  to  1400,  the  re- 
ligious literature  of  England  strikes  the  last  note   of 


II      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      39 

the  old  religious  impulse  and  the  boldest  music  of  the 
new.     The  Friar  is  slain,  the  Puritan  survives. 

2  7.  History  and  the  Story-telling  Poetry.  —  The 
Normans  brought  an  historical  taste  with  them  to 
England,  and  created  a  valuable  historical  literature. 
It  was  written  in  Latin,  and  we  have  nothing  to  do 
with  it  till  English  story-telling  grew  out  of  it  about 
the  time  of  the  Great  Charter.  But  it  was  in  itself 
of  such  importance  that  a  few  things  must  be  said 
concerning  it. 

(i)  The  men  who  wrote  it  were  called  Chroniclers. 
At  first  they  were  only  annalists — that  is,  they  jotted 
down  the  events  of  year  after  year  without  any  attempt 
to  bind  them  together  into  a  connected  whole.  Of  these, 
the  most  important,  and  indeed  they  were  something 
more  than  mere  annahsts,  were  Ordericus  Vitalis,  and 
his  predecessors,  Florence  of  Worcester  and  Simeon  of 
Durham.  But  afterwards,  from  the  time  of  Henry  I., 
another  class  of  men  arose,  who  wrote,  not  in  scattered 
monasteries,  but  at  the  Court.  Living  at  the  centre  of 
political  life,  their  histories  were  written  in  a  philosophic 
spirit,  and  wove  into  a  whole  the  growth  of  law  and 
national  life  and  the  story  of  affairs  abroad.  They  are 
our  great  authorities  for  the  history  of  these  times.  They 
begin  with  William  of  Malmesbury,  whose  book  ends  in 
1142,  and  die  out  after  Matthew  Paris,  1235-73.  His- 
torical prose  in  England  is  only  represented  after  the 
death  of  Henry  IH.  by  a  few  dry  Latin  annalists  till  it 
rose  again  in  modern   Enghsh  prose  in  1513,  when  Sir 


40  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAt. 

Thomas  More's  Life  of  Edward  V.  and  Usurpation  of 
Richard  III.  is  said  to  have  been  written. 

(2)  A  distinct  English  feeling  soon  sprang  up  among 
these  Norman  historians.  English  patriotism  was  far 
from  having  died  among  the  English  themselves.  The 
Sayings  of  /Elf red  were  written  in  English  by  the  English. 
These  and  some  ballads,  as  well  as  the  early  English 
war-songs,  interested  the  Norman  historians  and  were 
collected  by  them.  William  of  Malmesbury,  who  was 
bom  of  English  and  Norman  parents,  has  sympathies 
with  both  peoples,  and  his  history  marks  how  both  were 
becoming  one  nation.  The  same  welding  together  of 
the  conquered  and  the  conquerors  is  seen  in  Henry  of 
Huntingdon  and  others,  till  we  come  to  Matthew  Paris, 
whose  view  of  history  is  entirely  that  of  an  Englishman. 
When  he  wrote,  Norman  noble  and  English  yeoman, 
Norman  abbot  and  English  priest,  were,  and  are  in  his 
pages,  one  in  blood  and  one  in  interests. 

28.  English  Story-telling  grew  out  of  this  historical 
literature.  There  was  a  Welsh  priest  at  the  court  of 
Henry  I.,  called  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  who,  inspired 
by  the  Genius  of  romance,  composed  in  Latin  twelve 
short  books  (1132-35),  which  he  playfully  called  History. 
He  had  been  given,  he  said,  an  ancient  Welsh  book  to 
translate  which  told  in  verse  the  history  of  Britain  from 
the  days  when  Brut,  the  great-grandson  of  ^Eneas,  landed 
on  its  shores,  through  the  whole  history  of  King  Arthur 
down  to  Cadwallo,  a  Welsh  king  who  died  in  689.  The 
real  historians  were  angry  at  the  fiction,  and  declared 


n  FROM   THE    CONQUEST   TO    CHAtfCER  41 

that  throughout  the  whole  of  it  "  he  had  lied  saucily  and 
shamelessly."  It  was  indeed  only  a  clever  putting  to- 
gether and  invention  of  a  number  of  Welsh  and  other 
legends,  but  it  was  fhg  beginning  of  story-telling  after  the 
Conquest.  Every  one  who  read  it  was  delighted  with  it ; 
it  made,  as  we  should  say,  a  sensation,  and  as  much  on 
the  Continent  as  in  England.  Geoffrey  may  be  said  to 
have  created  the  heroic  figure  of  Arthur,  which  had  been 
only  sketched  in  the  compilation  which  passes  under  the 
name  of  Nennius.  In  it  the  Welsh  invaded  Enghsh  Hter- 
ature,  and  their  tales  have  never  since  ceased  to  live  in 
it.  They  charm  us  as  much  in  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the 
King  as  they  charmed  us  in  the  days  of  Henry  I.  But  the 
stories  Geoiifrey  of  Monmouth  told  were  in  Latin  prose. 
They  were  put  first  into  French  verse  by  Geoffrey  Gaimar 
for  the  wife  of  his  patron,  Ralph  FitzGilbert,  a  northern 
baron.  They  got  afterwards  to  France  and,  added  to 
from  Breton  legends,  were  made  into  a  poem  and  decked 
out  with  the  ornaments  of  French  romance.  In  that 
form  they  came  back  to  England  as  the  work  of  Wace,  a 
Norman  of  Caen,  the  writer  also  of  the  Roman  de  Rou, 
who  called  his  poem  the  Geste  des  Bretons  (afterwards 
the  Brut),  and  completed  it  in  1155,  shortly  after  the 
accession  of  Henry  II.  Spread  far  and  wide  in  France, 
it  led  to  an  immense  development  there  and  elsewhere 
of  the  Legend  of  Arthur  and  his  Knights. 

29.  Layamon's  "Brut."  —  In  this  French  form  the 
story  drifted  through  England,  and  at  last  falling  into  the 
hands  of  an  English  priest  in  Worcestershire,  he  resolved 


42  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

to  tell  it  in  alliterative  English  verse  to  his  countrymen, 
and  so  doing  became  the  writer  of  our  first  important 
English  poem  after  the  Conquest.  We  may  roughly  say 
that  its  date  is  1205,  ten  years  or  so  before  the  Orrmu- 
lum  was  written,  ten  years  before  the  Great  Charter.  It 
is  plain  that  its  composition,  though  it  told  a  Welsh  story, 
was  looked  on  as  a  patriotic  work  by  the  writer.  "There 
was  a  priest  in  the  land,"  he  writes  of  himself,  "whose 
name  was  Layamon ;  he  was  son  of  Leovenath :  May 
the  Lord  be  gracious  unto  him  !  He  dwelt  at  Eamley, 
a  noble  church  on  the  bank  of  Severn,  near  Radstone, 
where  he  read  books.  It  came  in  mind  to  him  and  in 
his  chiefest  thought  that  he  would  tell  the  noble  needs 
of  England,  what  the  men  were  named,  and  whence  they 
came,  who  first  had  English  land."  And  it  was  truly  of 
great  importance.  The  poem  opened  to  the  imagination 
of  the  English  people  an  immense,  though  a  fabled,  past 
for  the  history  of  the  island  they  dwelt  in,  and  made  a 
common  bond  of  interest  between  Norman  and  English- 
man. It  linked  also  the  Welsh  to  the  English  and  the 
Norman.  Written  on  the  borders  of  Wales,  it  introduces 
a  number  of  Briton  legends  of  which  Wace  knew  nothing, 
and  of  English  stories  also  down  to  the  days  of  ^thel- 
Stan.  It  enlarged  Arthur  before  the  eyes  of  men,  and 
even  Teutonic  sagas  enter  into  the  story.  In  the  realm 
of  poetry  all  nations  meet  and  are  reconciled.  Though 
a  great  deal  of  it  is  rendered  from  the  French,  there  are 
not  fifty  French  words  in  its  30,000  lines.  The  old  Eng- 
lish alliterative  metre  is  kept  up  with  a  few  rare  rhymes. 


n      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      43 

In  battle,  in  pathetic  story,  in  romantic  adventure,  in  in- 
vention, in  the  sympathy  of  sea  and  storm  with  heroic 
deeds,  he  is  a  greater  and  more  original  poet  than  those 
who  followed  him,  till  we  come  to  Chaucer.  He  touches 
with  one  hand  the  ancient  England  before  the  Conquest, 
he  touches  with  another  the  romantic  poetry  after  it.  In- 
deed, what  Csedmon  was  to  early  English  poetry,  Layamon 
is  to  English  poetry  after  the  Conquest.  He  is  the  first 
of  the  new  singers. 

30.  Story-telling  becomes  entirely  French  in  Form. — 
After  an  interval  the  desire  for  story-telling  increased  in 
England,  and  France  satisfied  the  desire.  The  French 
tales  were  carried  over  our  land  by  the  travelling  mer- 
chant and  friar,  by  the  gleemen  and  singers  who  trans- 
lated them,  or  sung  translations  of  them,  not  only  to  the 
castle  and  the  farm,  but  to  the  village  and  the  town. 
Floriz  and  Blancheflur  and  the  Romance  of  Sir  Tristrem 
were  versified  before  1300,  and  many  other  romantic 
tales.  The  lay  of  Havelok  the  Dane  was  perhaps  adapted 
from  the  French  towards  the  close  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, and  so  was  the  song  of  King  Horn.  Their  English 
origin  is  also  maintained,  and  at  least  both  rest  on  Teutonic 
tradition.  The  first  took  form  in  northern  England,  and 
shares  in  the  rough  vigour  of  the  north.  The  second  is  a 
southern  tale,  and  has  been  entirely  transformed  by  the 
romantic  spirit.  English  in  rhythm,  it  is  thoroughly 
French  in  feeling.  The  romances  of  King  Alexander  and 
of  Richard  Cceur  de  Lion,  and  of  Arthour  and  Merlin, 
while  romantic  in  form,  preserve  an  English  sentiment 


44  ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


CHAP. 


and  originality  which  make  us  remember  that,  when  they 
were  written,  Edward  I.  was  making  Norman  and  Enghsh 
into  one  people.  About  1300  the  story-telling  verged 
into  historical  poems,  and  Robert  of  Gloucester  wrote 
his  Rhyming  C^r<7;z/V/(?,  from  Brutus  to  Edward  I.  As  the 
dates  grow  nearer  to  1300,  the  amount  of  French  words 
increases,  and  the  French  romantic  manner  of  story- telling. 
In  the  Romance  of  Alexander,  to  take  one  example  as  a 
type  of  all,  the  natural  landscape,  the  conventional  intro- 
ductions to  the  parts,  the  gorgeous  descriptions  of  pomps, 
and  armour,  and  cities,  the  magic  wonders,  the  manners, 
and  feasts,  and  battles  of  chivalry,  especially  the  love 
affairs  and  feelings,  are  all  steeped  in  the  colours  of 
French  romantic  poetry.  Now  this  romance  was  origi- 
nally adapted  by  a  Frenchman  about  the  year  1200.  It 
took  therefore  nearly  a  century  before  the  French 
romantic  manner  of  poetry  could  be  naturalised  in 
English ;  and  it  was  naturaUsed,  curious  to  say,  at  the 
very  time  when  England  as  a  nation  had  lost  its  French 
attachments  and  become  entirely  English. 

31.  Cycles  of  Romance.  —  At  this  time,  then,  the 
French  romance  of  a  hundred  years  earlier  was  made 
English  in  England.  There  were  four  great  romantic 
stories.  The  first  was  that  of  King  Arthur,  and  Geoffrey 
of  Monmouth  began  it  in  England  about  1132.  Before 
1 150  it  was  taken  up  in  Normandy,  sent  therefrom  into 
France,  and  independent  invention  soon  began  to  play 
upon  it.  Of  these  inventors  the  first  was  Crestien  of 
T^royes,  but  we  owe  to  Robert  de  Boron,  a  knight  of  the 


n       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      45 

Vosges  country,  the  first  poem  on  the  Graal,  the  Holy 
Dish  with  which  Christ  celebrated  the  Last  Supper,  and 
which  in  the  hands  of  Joseph  of  Arimathea  received 
his  blood.  The  origin  of  the  legend  may  be  traced  to 
Celtic  stories,  and  this  may  partly  account  for  its 
swift  development  in  the  west  of  England.  Two  more 
romances  on  the  subject,  Le  Grand  St  Graal  and  La 
Queste  del  St.  Graal,  in  which  Galahad  appears,  are 
attributed  to  Walter  Map,  a  friend  of  Henry  II.,  and 
they  were  certainly  written  in  England  in  that  king's 
reign.  It  is  due  to  the  Anglo-Normans  and  the  Normans 
that  this  Graal-story,  in  which  the  Arthur  legends  were 
bound  up  with  the  highest  doctrine  of  the  Church,  took 
its  great  development,  not  only  in  France  but  in  Ger- 
many. Alongside  of  the  Arthurian  Saga  arose  the 
Tristan  story,  and,  at  first  independent,  it  was  afterwards 
linked  on  to  the  tale  of  Arthur.  These  two  together, 
along  with  stories  invented  concerning  all  the  Knights  of 
the  Round  Table,  and  chiefly  Launcelot  and  Gawaine, 
were  worked  over  in  a  multitude  of  romantic  tales,  most 
of  which  became  popular  in  England,  and  were  sung  and 
made  into  EngUsh  verse  from  the  thirteenth  to  the 
sixteenth  century. 

The  second  romantic  story  was  that  of  Charlemagne 
and  his  twelve  peers.  Begun  in  France  with  the  Song  of 
Roland,  a  huge  tale  of  Charlemagne  was  forged  about 
1 1 10  in  the  name  of  Archbishop  Turpin.  In  this, 
Charlemagne's  wars  were  bound  up  with  oriental  legend, 
with  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  with  every  kind  of  story.     A 


46  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

great  number  of  Carlovingian  romances  followed.  This 
cycle,  however,  owing  perhaps  to  the  alienation  of  the 
Anglo-Normans  in  England  from  the  French,  was  not 
much  developed  in  England  at  the  beginning  of  our 
romance-writing.  The  most  popular  of  the  Carlovingian 
poems  was  the  poem  of  Otinel  in  the  reign  of  Edward 
II. ;  but  the  most  beautiful  was  Amis  et  Amiloun,  the 
English  version  of  which  so  wholly  leaves  out  its  con- 
nexion with  Charlemagne  that  it  has  been  supposed  to  be 
an  original  Anglo-Norman-English  poem.  The  Roland^ 
the  Charlemagne  and  Roland,  a  Siege  of  Milan,  Sir 
Ferumbras  and  the  humorous  Rauf  Coilyear  almost 
exhaust  the  English  poems  of  this  cycle. 

The  third  Romantic  story  is  that  of  the  Life  of 
Alexander,  derived  from  a  Latin  version  (fourth  century) 
of  the  Greek  story  made  in  Alexandria  under  the  name 
of  Callisthenes.  Its  romantic  wonders,  fictions,  and 
magic,  largely  added  to  from  the  Arabian  books  about 
Eskander,  were  doubled  by  the  imagination  and  coloured 
with  all  the  romance  of  chivalry  in  the  eleventh  or  twelfth 
century ;  and  the  story  became  so  common  in  England 
that  "  every  wight  that  hath  discrecioune,"  says  Chaucer, 
had  heard  of  Alexander's  fortune.  No  doubt  it  was  sung 
all  over  England,  but  we  have  only  a  few  poems  concern- 
ing it  in  English,  the  last  of  which,  a  free  translation  of 
a  French  original,  The  Buik  of  the  most  noble  and  vail- 
zeand  Conquerour,  belongs  to  the  fourth  decade  of  the 
fifteenth  century. 

The  fourth  romantic  story,  first  in  date,  but  last  in  ira- 


11       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      4/ 

portance  in  England,  was  that  of  the  Siege  of  Troy.  Two 
Latin  pieces,  bearing  the  names  of  Dares  Fhrygius  and 
of  Dictys  Cretensis,  composed  about  the  story  of  Troy 
in  the  decline  of  Latin  literature,  were  worked  over  by 
Benoit  de  Sainte  More,  with  fabulous  and  romantic  in- 
ventions of  his  own,  in  the  Roman  de  Troie,  about  1160. 
Guido  della  Colonne,  of  Messina,  took  them  up  about 
1270,  and  with  additions  woven  into  them  from  the 
Theban  and  Argonautic  stories,  made  a  great  Latin  story 
out  of  them  which  Lydgate  used.  Virgil  supplied  mate- 
rials for  a  romance  of  /Eneas;  Statius  for  a  Roman  de 
Thebes.  During  the  crusades  Byzantine  and  oriental 
stories  entered  into  French  romance,  and  especially  into 
this  Cycle  of  Troy.  The  Gest  Historiale  (XIV.  Cent.) 
of  the  Destruction  of  Troy,  first  introduced  the  story  of 
Troilus  (invented  by  Benoit)  to  readers  of  EngHsh  verse. 
This  cycle  does  not  seem  to  have  much  entered  into  our 
literature  till  Chaucer's  time,  but  it  attracted  both  Chau- 
cer and  Lydgate. 

These  were  the  four  great  Romantic  cycles  which  were 
used  by  English  poets.  But  the  desire  for  romances 
was  not  satisfied  with  these.  A  few  collected  round  Old 
English  traditions  or  history.  There  was  a  poem  about 
Wade,  the  father  of  Weland,  to  which  Chaucer  alludes. 
It  has  long  been  lost,  but  a  small  fragment  of  it  has  lately 
been  discovered.  I  have  already  mentioned  the  stories 
of  Horn  and  Havelok.  The  romances  of  Guy  of  War- 
wick and  of  Bevis  of  Hampton,  though  both  translated 
from  the  French,  take  us  back  to  the  time  of  ^thelstan 


48  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

and  Eadgar,  but  are  as  unhistorical  as  the  tales  of  Troy 
and  Alexander.  A  number  of  other  romances  from  vari- 
ous sources  belong  to  the  time  of  the  Edwards,  and  were 
all  derived  from  the  French.  Short  tales  also  sprang  up, 
taken  from  the  fabliaux^  from  the  Roman  de  Renart, 
from  the  French  lais^  some  satirical,  some  of  love,  some 
in  the  form  of  "debates."  Compilations  of  tales  were 
made.  The  Sevyn  Sages  was  worked  from  the  oriental 
stock  of  the  Book  of  the  Seven  Wise  Men  ;  and  the  Gesta 
Romanorum,  a  book  of  stories  which  began  to  be  used 
in  England  in  the  reign  of  Edward  I.,  supplied  the  mate- 
rial for  tales  in  England  as  well  as  all  over  Europe.  The 
country  was  therefore  swarming  with  tales,  chiefly  French, 
and  its  poetic  imagination  with  the  fancies,  the  fables, 
the  love,  and  the  ornaments  of  French  romance,  trans- 
lated and  imitated  in  English,  and  written  in  the  metres 
of  France  and  in  rhyme. 

32.  Alliterative  English  Poems,  1350.  —  In  the  midst 
of  all  this  French  imitation,  something  national  begins 
to  gleam,  and  it  comes  from  the  west,  from  the  lands  on 
the  edge  of  Wales  and  Cumbria.  This  is  the  recovery 
of  the  Old  English  metre,  that  fine,  elastic,  marching, 
epic,  alliterative  metre  which  Layamon  used,  and  which 
takes  us  back  to  Cynewulf.  The  things  written  now  in 
this  national  metre  are  still  romantic  and  French  in  sub- 
ject, feeling,  and  manners ;  but  their  Teutonic  metre 
sUdes  a  fresh,  even  a  vigorous  originality,  into  the  con- 
ventional phrasing  of  the  romantic  poetry.  This  reaction 
from  a  French  to  an  English  type  began  in  the  middle 


a  FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      49 

of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  runs  parallel  with  the  gen- 
eral victory  of  the  English  language  over  the  French  in 
the  time  of  Edward  III.  At  least  twelve  important 
poems  are  written  in  this  alliterative  metre,  the  last  of 
which  in  this  century  was  Langland's  Vision.  Among 
these,  but  not  altogether  alliterative,  are  the  poems  of  a 
northern,  perhaps  a  Lancashire  poet.  These  are  Sir 
Gawayne  and  the  Grene  Knight;  Pearl;  and  Clean- 
ness and  Patience  (Clannesse  and  Pacience) .  This  poet, 
who  probably  had  finished  his  poems  just  as  Chaucer  and 
Langland  began  to  write,  stands  quite  apart  from  his  fel- 
lows in  excellence,  and,  indeed,  along  with  Langland  and 
only  below  Chaucer.  Though  Sir  Gawayne  is  romantic, 
it  escapes  at  many  points  from  the  French  spirit.  It  is 
more  original,  it  is  more  imaginative,  it  is  far  more  in- 
tense in  feeling,  than  the  ordinary  romances.  It  de- 
scribes natural  scenery  at  first  hand,  and  the  scenery  is 
that  of  the  poet's  own  country.  It  is  moral  in  aim,  it  is 
composed  into  an  organic  whole.  It  is  full  of  new  inven- 
tions. In  the  Pearl,  our  earliest  In  Memoriam,  there  is 
an  extraordinary  personal  passion  of  grief  and  of  religious 
exultation  pervading  a  lovely  symbolism,  which  is  quite 
unique.  The  same  strong  personality,  mixed  with  a 
more  distinctly  moral  purpose,  fills  the  writer's  two  other 
poems,  and  brings  him  as  a  religious  poet  into  range 
with  Langland  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  Cynewulf 
on  the  other.  No  one  can  crudely  mix  him  up  with 
France.  He  is  as  English,  at  the  last,  as  Langland  or 
Chaucer. 

B 


50  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

33.  English  Lyrics.  —  In  the  midst  of  all  this  story- 
telling, like  prophecies  of  what  should  afterwards  be  so 
lovely  in  our  poetry,  rose,  no  one  can  tell  how,  some 
lyric  poems,  country  idylls,  love  songs,  and,  later  on, 
some  war-songs.  The  English  ballad,  sung  from  town 
to  town  by  wandering  gleemen,  had  never  altogether 
died.  A  number  of  rude  ballads  collected  round  the 
legendary  Robin  Hood,  and  the  kind  of  poetic  litera- 
ture which  sang  of  the  outlaw  and  the  forest,  and  after- 
wards so  fidly  of  the  wild  border  life,  gradually  took 
form.  About  1280  a  beautiful  little  idyll  called  the 
Owl  and  the  Nightingale  was  written,  probably  in  Dor- 
setshire, in  which  the  rival  birds  submit  their  quarrel  for 
precedence  to  the  possible  writer  of  the  poem,  Nicholas 
of  Guildford.  About  1300  we  meet  with  a  few  lyric 
poems,  full  of  charm.  They  sing  of  spring-time  with  its 
blossoms,  of  the  woods  ringing  with  the  thrush  and  night- 
ingale, of  the  flowers  and  the  seemly  sun,  of  country 
work,  of  the  woes  and  joys  of  love,  and  many  other 
delightful  things.  They  are  tinged  with  the  colour  of 
French  romance,  but  they  have  an  English  background. 
This  lyrical  movement  began  with  hymns  to  the  Virgin 
and  Christ,  touched  with  the  sentiments  of  Latin  and 
Norman-French  amorous  poetry.  These  changed  into 
frank  love-poems  in  the  hands  of  the  wandering  stu- 
dents. Many  arose  on  the  Welsh  marches,  and  were 
tinged  with  Celtic  feeling.  Some  are  no  doubt  Uterary 
renderings  of  English  folk-songs,  such  as  "Sumer  is 
ycumen  in,"  "Blow,  northerne  wind,"  and  are  full  of 


n       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      $1 

bve  of  women  and  love  of  nature.  After  these,  a  new 
type  of  religious  lyrics  blossomed,  in  which,  as  in  all 
future  English  poetry,  the  love  of  nature  was  mingled 
with  the  love  of  God  and  the  longing  of  the  soul  for 
perfect  beauty.  Satirical  lyrics  also  arose,  and  the  pro- 
verbial poetry  of  France  gave  an  impulse  to  collections 
like  the  Proverbs  of  Hendyng.  Most  of  these  were  of 
the  time  of  Henry  III.  and  Edward  I.  Political  ballads 
now  began,  in  Edward  I.'s  reign,  to  be  frequently  written 
in  English,  but  the  only  dateable  ballads  of  importance 
are  that  on  the  battle  of  Lewes,  1 264,  and  the  ten  war 
lyrics  of  Laurence  Minot,  who,  in  1352,  sang  the  great 
deeds  and  battles  of  Edward  HI. 

34.  The  King's  English.  —  After  the  Conquest,  French 
or  Latin  was  the  language  of  the  literary  class.  The  Eng- 
lish tongue,  spoken  only  by  the  people,  fell  back  from  the 
standard  West-Saxon  English  of  the  Chronicle  into  that 
broken  state  of  anarchy  in  which  each  part  of  the  country 
has  its  own  dialect,  and  each  writer  uses  the  dialect  of 
his  own  dwelling-place.  All  the  poems  then  of  which  we 
have  spoken  were  written  in  dialects  of  English,  not  in  a 
fixed  English  common  to  all  writers.  During  the  prev- 
alence of  French,  and  the  continued  translation  of 
French  poems,  EngHsh  had  been  invaded  by  French 
words,  and  though  it  had  become,  in  Edward  III.'s 
reign,  the  national  tongue,  it  had  been  transformed  as  a 
language.  The  old  inflections  had  mostly  disappeared. 
French  endings  and  prefixes  were  used,  till  even  so  early 
as  the  end  of  Edward  I.'s  reign,  in  Robert  of  Bninne's 


52  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

work,  a  third  of  his  nouns,  adverbs,  and  verbs,  are 
French.  His  work  was  still  however  in  a  dialect  —  the 
East-Midland  dialect.  This  dialect  grew  into  the  lan- 
guage of  literature,  the  standard  English.  In  Robert  of 
Brunne,  it  was  most  literary  and  most  French,  but  we 
must  remember  that  the  same  dialect  belonged  to  the 
two  centres  of  learning,  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  that 
London,  on  this  side  the  Thames  was  contained  in  the 
same  Anglian  boundaries.  This  conquering  dialect,  when 
it  became  the  standard  English,  did  not  prevent  the 
Vision  concerning  Piers  Plowman  and  Wyclif  s  transla- 
tion of  the  Bible  from  being  written  in  a  dialect,  but  it 
became  the  English  in  which  all  future  English  literature 
was  to  be  written.  It  was  fixed  into  clear  form  by 
Chaucer.  It  was  the  language  talked  at  the  court  and 
in  the  court  society  to  which  that  poet  belonged.  It  was 
the  King's  English,  and  the  fact  that  it  was  the  tongue 
of  the  best  and  most  cultivated  society,  as  well  as  the 
great  excellence  of  the  works  written  in  it  by  Chaucer, 
made  it  at  once  the  tongue  of  literature. 

35.  Religious  Literature  in  Langland  and  Wyclif.  — 
We  have  traced  the  work  of  "  transition  English,"  as  it 
has  been  called,  along  the  lines  of  popular  religion  and 
story-telling.  The  first  of  these,  in  the  realm  of  poetry, 
reaches  its  goal  in  the  work  of  William  Langland ;  in  the 
realm  of  prose  it  reaches  its  goal  in  Wyclif.  In  both 
these  writers,  the  work  differs  from  any  that  went  before 
it,  by  its  popular  power,  and  by  the  depth  of  its  re- 
ligious feeling.     It  is  plain  that  it  represented  a  society 


n      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      53 

much  more  strongly  moved  by  religion  than  that  of 
the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century.  In  Wyclif,  the 
voice  comes  from  the  university  and  it  went  all  over  the 
land  in  the  body  of  preachers  whom,  like  Wesley,  he  sent 
forth.  In  Langland's  Vision  we  have  a  voice  from  the 
centre  of  the  people  themselves;  his  poem  is  written 
in  old  aUiterative  English  verse,  and  in  the  Old  English 
manner.  The  very  ploughboy  could  understand  it.  It 
became  the  book  of  those  who  desired  social  and  Church 
reform.  It  was  as  eagerly  listened  to  by  the  free  labourers 
and  fugitive  serfs  who  collected  round  John  Ball  and  Wat 
Tyler.  It  embodied  a  puritan  reaction  against  the  Friars 
who  had  fallen  away  from  the  religious  revival  they  had 
so  nobly  instituted.  The  strongest  cry  of  this  regenerated 
religion  was  for  truth  as  against  hypocrisy,  for  purity  in 
State  and  Church  and  private  life,  for  honest  labour,  and 
against  ill-gotten  wealth  and  its  tyrannical  persecution. 
There  was  also  a  great  movement  at  this  time  against  the 
class  system  of  the  Middle  Ages.  This  was  made  a  re- 
ligious movement  when  the  equality  of  all  men  before 
God  was  maintained,  and  a  social  movement  when  it  pro- 
tested against  the  oppression  of  the  poor  and  on  behalf 
of  their  misery.  The  French  wars  had  increased  this 
misery.  Heavy  taxation  and  severe  laws  ground  down  the 
peasantry.  The  "Black  Death  "  deepened  the  wretched- 
ness into  panic.  In  1349,  1362,  and  1369  it  swept  over 
England.  Grass  grew  in  the  towns  ;  whole  villages  were 
left  uninhabited;  a  wild  terror  fell  upon  the  people, 
which  was  added  to  by  a  fierce  tempest  in  1362  that  to 


54  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

men's  minds  told  of  the  wrath  of  God.     In  their  panic 
then,  as  well  as  in  their  pain,  they  fled  to  religion. 

36.  Piers  Plowman.  —  All  these  elements  are  to  be 
found  fully  represented  in  the  Vision  of  William  concern- 
ing Piers  Plowman,  followed  by  that  concerning  Dowel, 
Dobet,  and  Dobest.  Its  author,  William  Langland, 
though  we  are  not  certain  of  his  surname,  was  bom,  about 
1332,  at  Cleobury  Mortimer,  in  Shropshire.  His  Vision 
begins  with  a  description  of  his  sleeping  on  the  Malvern 
Hills,  and  the  first  text  of  it  was  probably  written  in  the 
country  in  1362.  At  the  accession  of  Richard  II.,  1377, 
he  was  in  London.  The  great  popularity  of  his  poem 
made  him  in  that  year,  and  again  about  the  year  1398, 
send  forth  two  more  texts  of  his  poem.  In  these  texts 
he  made  so  many  additions  to  the  first  text  that  he  nearly 
doubled  the  length  of  the  original  poem.  In  1399,  he 
wrote  his  last  poem,  Richard  the  Pe deles s,  and  then  died, 
probably  in  1400,  and  we  may  hope  in  the  quiet  of  the 
West  country. 

37.  His  Vision.  —  He  paints  his  portrait  as  he  was 
when  he  lived  in  Cornhill,  a  tall,  gaunt  figure,  whom  men 
called  Long  Will ;  clothed  in  the  black  robes  in  which  he 
sang  for  a  few  pence  at  the  funerals  of  the  rich ;  hating 
to  take  his  cap  off  his  shaven  head  to  bow  to  the  lords 
and  ladies  that  rode  by  in  silver  and  furs  as  he  stalked 
in  observant  moodiness  along  the  Strand.  It  is  this 
figure  which  in  indignant  sorrow  walks  through  the 
whole  poem.  The  dream  of  the  "  field  full  of  folk," 
with  which   it   begins,  brings   together  nearly  as  many 


n      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      55 

typical  characters  as  the  Tales  of  Chaucer  do.  In  the 
first  part,  the  truth  sought  for  is  righteous  dealing  in 
Church,  and  Law,  and  State.  After  the  Prologue  of  the 
"  field  full  of  folk  "  and  in  it  the  Tower  of  Truth  and  the 
Dungeon  where  the  Father  of  Falsehood  lives,  the  Vision 
treats  of  Holy  Church  who  tells  the  dreamer  of  Truth. 
Where  is  Falsehood?  he  asks.  She  bids  him  turn,  and 
he  sees  Falsehood  and  Lady  Meed,  and  learns  that 
they  are  to  be  married.  Theology  interferes  and  all  the 
parties  go  to  London  before  the  King.  Laay  Meed, 
arraigned  on  Falsehood's  flight,  is  advised  by  the  King 
to  marry  Conscience,  but  Conscience  indignantly  pro- 
claims her  faults,  and  prophesies  that  one  day  Reason 
will  judge  the  world.  On  this  the  King  sends  for  Reason, 
who,  deciding  a  question  against  Wrong  and  in  spite  of 
Meed  (or  bribery),  is  begged  by  the  King  to  remain 
with  him.  This  fills  four  divisions  or  "Passus."  The 
fifth  Passus  contains  the  confession  of  the  Seven  Deadly 
Sins,  and  is  full  of  vivid  pictures  of  friars,  robbers,  nuns, 
of  village  life,  of  London  alehouses,  of  all  the  vices  of  the 
time.  It  ends  with  the  search  for  Truth  being  taken  up 
by  all  the  penitents,  and  then  for  the  first  time  Piers 
Plowman  appears  and  describes  the  way.  He  sets  all 
who  come  to  him  to  hard  work,  and  it  is  here  that  the 
passages  occur  in  which  the  labouring  poor  and  their  evils 
are  dwelt  upon.  The  seventh  Passus  introduces  the  bull 
of  pardon  sent  by  Truth  (God  the  Father)  to  Piers.  A 
Priest  declares  it  is  not  valid,  and  the  discussion  between 
him  and  Piers  is  so  hot  that  the  Dreamer  awakes  and 


56  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

ends  with  a  fine  outburst  on  the  wretchedness  of  a  trust 
in  indulgences  and  the  nobleness  of  a  righteous  life. 
This  is  the  first  part  of  the  poem. 

In  the  second  part  the  truth  sought  for  is  that  of 
righteous  life,  to  Do  Well,  to  Do  Better,  to  Do  Best,  the 
three  titles  of  a  new  vision  and  a  new  pilgrimage.  In  a 
series  of  dreams  and  a  highly-wrought  allegory,  Do  Well, 
Do  Bet,  and  Do  Best  are  finally  identified  with  Jesus 
Christ,  who  now  appears  as  Love  in  the  dress  of  Piers 
Plowman.  Do  Well  is  full  of  curious  and  important 
passages.  Do  Bet  points  out  Christ  as  the  Saviour  of  the 
World,  describes  His  death,  resurrection,  and  victory  over 
Death  and .  Sin.  And  the  dreamer  awakes  in  a  transport 
of  joy,  with  the  Easter  chimes  pealing  in  his  ears.  But 
as  Langland  looked  round  on  the  world,  the  victory  did 
not  seem  real,  and  the  stern  dreamer  passed  out  of 
triumph  into  the  dark  sorrow  in  which  he  lived.  He 
dreams  again  in  Do  Best,  and  sees,  as  Christ  leaves  the 
earth,  the  reign  of  Antichrist.  Evils  attack  the  Church 
and  mankind.  Envy,  Pride,  and  Sloth,  helped  by  the 
Friars,  besiege  Conscience.  Conscience  cries  on  Contri- 
tion to  help  him,  but  Contrition  is  asleep,  and  Conscience, 
all  but  despairing,  grasps  his  pilgrim  staff  and  sets  out  to 
wander  over  the  world,  praying  for  luck  and  health,  "  till 
he  have  Piers  the  Plowman,"  till  he  find  the  Saviour. 
And  then  the  dreamer  wakes  for  the  last  time,  weeping 
bitterly.  This  is  the  poem  which  displays  to  us  that  side 
of  English  society  which  Chaucer  had  not  touched,  and 
which  wrought  so  strongly  in  men's  minds  that  its  moral 


n       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      $7 

influence  was  almost  as  widely  spread  as  Wyclif  s  in  the 
revolt  which  had  now  begun  against  Latin  Christianity. 
Its  fame  was  so  great,  that  it  produced  imitators.  About 
1394,  another  alliterative  poem  was  set  forth  by  an 
unknown  author,  with  the  title  of  Pierce  the  Ploughman's 
Crede ;  and  the  PlowmarCs  Tale,  wrongly  attributed  to 
Chaucer,  is  another  witness  to  the  popularity  of  Langland. 
38.  Wyclif.  —  At  the  same  time  as  the  Vision  was 
being  read  all  over  England,  John  Wyclif,  about  1378, 
determined  to  give  a  full  translation  of  the  Bible  to  the 
English  people  in  their  own  tongue.  He  himself  trans- 
lated the  New  Testament.  His  assistant,  Nicholas  of 
Hereford,  finished  the  Old  Testament  as  far  as  Baruch, 
and  Wyclif  completed  it.  3ome  time  after,  John  Purvey, 
under  Wyclif,  revised  the  whole,  corrected  its  errors, 
did  away  with  its  Latinisms,  and  made  it  a  book  of 
sterling  English  —  a  book  which  had  naturally  a  great 
power  to  fix  and  preserve  words  in  our  language.  But 
WycUf  did  much  more  than  this  for  our  tongue.  He 
made  it  the  popular  language  of  religious  thought 
and  feeling.  In  1381  he  was  in  full  battle  with  the 
Church  on  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  and  was 
condemned  to  silence.  He  replied  by  appealing  to  the 
whole  of  England  in  the  speech  of  the  people.  He  sent 
forth  tract  after  tract,  sermon  after  sermon,  couched  not 
in  the  dry,  philosophic  style  of  the  schoolmen,  but  in 
short,  sharp,  stinging  sentences,  full  of  the  homely  words 
used  in  his  own  Bible,  denying  one  by  one  almost  all  the 
doctrines,  and  denouncing  the  practices,  of  the  Church  of 


58  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAK 

Rome.  He  was  our  first  Protestant.  It  was  a  new 
literary  vein  to  open,  the  vein  of  the  pamphleteer.  With 
his  work  then,  and  with  Langland's,  we  bring  up  to  the 
year  1400  the  English  prose  and  poetry  pertaining  to 
religion,  the  course  of  which  we  have  been  tracing  since 
the  Conquest. 

39.  Story-telling  is  the  other  line  on  which  we  have 
placed  our  literature,  and  it  is  now  represented  by  John 
GowER.  He  belongs  to  a  school  older  than  Chaucer, 
inasmuch  as  he  is  scarcely  touched  by  the  Italian,  but 
chiefly  by  the  French  influence.  However,  he  had  read 
Petrarca.  Fifty  Balades  prove  with  what  clumsy  ease  he 
could  write  in  the  French  tongue  about  the  affairs  of  love. 
As  he  grew  older  he  grew  graver,  and  partly  as  the 
religious  and  social  reformer,  and  partly  as  the  story- 
teller, he  fills  up  the  literary  space  between  the  spirit 
of  Langland  and  Chaucer.  In  the  church  of  St.  Sav- 
iour, at  Southwark,  his  head  is  still  seen  resting  on  his 
three  great  works,  the  Speculum  Meditantis,  the  Vox 
Clamantis,  the  Confessio  Amantis,  1393.  It  marks  the 
unsettled  state  of  our  literary  language,  that  each  of 
these  was  written  in  a  different  tongue,  the  first  in 
French,  the  second  in  Latin,  the  third  in  English.  The 
first  of  these  has  been  lost,  but  has  lately  been  dis- 
covered at  Cambridge.  The  second  is  a  dream  which 
passes  into  a  sermon,  cataloguing  all  the  vices  of  the 
time,  and  is  suggested  by  the  peasant  rising  of  1381. 

The  third,  his  EngHsh  work,  is  a  dialogue  between  a 
lover  and  his  confessor  a  priest  of  Venus,  and  in  its 


11       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      59 

course,  and  with  an  imitation  of  Jean  de  Meung's  part  of 
the  Roman  de  la  Rose,  all  the  passions  and  studies  which 
may  hinder  love  are  dwelt  upon,  partly  in  allegory,  and 
their  operation  illustrated  by  apposite  stories,  borrowed 
from  the  Gesta  Romanorum  and  from  the  Romances. 
But  the  book  is  in  reality  a  better  and  larger  collection 
of  tales  than  was  ever  made  before  in  EngUsh.  The 
telling  of  the  tales  is  wearisome,  and  the  smoothness  of 
the  verse  makes  them  more  wearisome.  But  Gower  was 
a  careful  writer  of  English ;  and  in  his  satire  of  evils, 
and  in  his  grave  reproof  of  the  follies  of  Richard  II., 
he  rises  into  his  best  strain.  The  king  himself,  even 
though  reproved,  was  a  patron  of  the  poet.  It  was  as 
Gower  was  rowing  on  the  Thames  that  the  royal  barge 
drew  near,  and  he  was  called  to  the  king's  side.  "  Book 
some  new  thing,"  said  the  king,  '*  in  the  way  you  are  used, 
into  which  book  I  myself  may  often  look ; "  and  the  re- 
quest was  the  origin  of  the  Confession  of  a  Lover.  He 
ended  by  writing  The  Tripartite  Chronicle.  It  is  with 
pleasure  that  we  turn  from  the  learned  man  of  talent 
to  Geoffrey  Chaucer  —  to  the  genius  who  called  Gower, 
with  perhaps  some  of  the  irony  of  an  artist,  "  the  moral 
Gower." 

40.  Chaucer's  French  Period.  —  Geoffrey  Chaucer 
was  the  son  of  John  Chaucer,  a  vintner,  of  Thames 
Street,  London,  and  was  born  in  1340  or  a  year  or  two 
earUer.  He  hved  almost  all  his  life  in  London,  in  the 
centre  of  its  work  and  society.  When  he  was  sixteen  he 
became  page  to  the  wife  of  Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence, 


60  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAf. 

and  continued  at  the  court  till  he  joined  the  army  in 
France  in  1359.  He  was  taken  prisoner,  but  ransomed 
before  the  treaty  of  Bretigny,  in  1360.  We  then  knovr 
nothing  of  his  life  for  seven  years ;  but  from  items  in  the 
Exchequer  Rolls,  we  find  that  he  was  again  connected 
with  the  court,  from  1366  to  1372.  He  was  made  a 
valet  of  the  king's  chamber,  and  in  1368  an  "esquire 
of  less  degree."  It  was  during  this  time  that  he  began 
to  write.  We  seem  to  have  evidence  that  he  composed 
in  his  wild  youthful  days  a  number  of  love  poems,  none 
of  which  have  survived,  but  which  gave  him  some  fame 
as  a  poet.  It  is  said  that  the  A,  B,  C,  a  prayer  to  the 
Virgin,  is  the  first  of  his  extant  poems,  but  some  are  in- 
clined to  put  it  later.  The  translation  of  the  Roman  de 
la  Rose  which  we  possess  is,  with  the  exception  of  the 
first  1 705  lines,  denied  to  be  his,  but  it  is  certain  that  he 
did  make  a  translation  of  the  French  poem ;  and  there 
are  a  few  who  think  that  Chaucer's  translation  was  made 
about  1380,  and  that  it  is  completely  lost.  It  is  com- 
monly said  that  he  wrote  the  Compleynt  unto  PitCy  a 
tender  and  lovely  Httle  poem,  before  1369.  This  was 
followed  by  the  Boke  of  the  Duchesse,  in  1369,  a  pathetic 
allegory  of  the  death  of  Blanche  of  Castile,  whose  hus- 
band, John  of  Gaunt,  was  Chaucer's  patron.  These, 
being  written  under  the  influence  of  French  poetry,  are 
classed  under  the  name  of  Chaucer's  first  period.  There 
are  lines  in  them  which  seem  to  speak  of  a  luckless  love 
affair,  and  in  this  broken  love  it  has  been  supposed  we 
find  some  key  to  Chaucer's   early  life.     However  that 


11      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      6l 

may  be,  he  was  married  to  Philippa  Chaucer  at  some 
period  between  1366  and  1374.  Of  the  children  of 
this  marriage  we  only  know  certainly  of  one,  Lewis, 
for  whom  he  made  his  treatise  on  the  Astrolabe. 

4 1 .  Chaucer's  Italian  Period. —  Chaucer's  second  poetic 
period  may  be  called  the  period  of  Italian  influence,  from 
1372  to  1384.  During  these  years  he  went  for  the  king 
on  four,  perhaps  five,  diplomatic  missions.  Two  of  these 
were  to  Italy  —  the  first  to  Genoa,  Pisa,  and  Florence, 
1372-3 ;  the  second  to  Lombardy,  1378-9.  At  that 
time  the  great  Italian  literature  which  inspired  then, 
and  still  inspires,  European  literature,  had  reached  an 
astonishing  excellence,  and  it  opened  to  Chaucer  a 
new  world  of  art.  His  many  quotations  from  Dante 
show  that  he  had  read  the  Divina  Commedia,  and  we 
may  well  think  that  he  then  first  learnt  the  full  power 
and  range  of  poetry.  He  read  the  Sonnets  of  Petrarca, 
and  he  learnt  what  is  meant  by  "  form  "  in  poetry ;  but 
Petrarca  never  had  the  same  power  over  him  which 
Dante  possessed.  He  read  the  tales  and  poems  of 
Boccaccio,  who  made  Italian  prose,  and  in  them  he  first 
saw  how  to  tell  a  story  exquisitely.  Petrarca  and  Boc- 
caccio he  may  even  have  met,  for  they  died  in  1374  and 
1375,  and  Petrarca  was  in  1373  at  Arqua,  close  to  Padua, 
and  employed  on  the  Latin  version  of  the  story  of  Gri- 
silde,  the  version  which  Chaucer  translated  in  the  Clerk's 
tale.  But  Dante  he  could  not  see,  for  he  had  died  at 
Ravenna  in  1321.  When  he  came  back  from  these 
journeys  he  was  a  new  man.     He  threw  aside  the  romau- 


62  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP 

tic  poetry  much  in  vogue,  and  perhaps  laughed  at  it  then 
in  his  gay  and  kindly  manner  in  the  Rime  of  Sir  Thopas, 
one  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.  His  chief  work  of  this 
time  bears  witness  to  the  influence  of  Italy.  It  was 
Troilus  and  Criseyde,  1380-3,  a  translation,  with  many 
changes  and  additions,  of  the  Filostrato  of  Boccaccio. 
The  additions  (and  he  nearly  doubled  the  poem)  are 
stamped  with  his  own  peculiar  tenderness,  vividness,  and 
simplicity.  His  changes  from  the  original  are  all  tow- 
ards the  side  of  purity,  good  taste,  and  piety.  We 
meet  the  further  influence  of  Boccaccio  in  the  birth  of 
some  of  the  Canterbury  Tales,  and  of  Petrarca  in  the 
Tales  themselves.  To  this  time  is  now  referred  the  Lyf 
of  Seint  Cecyle,  afterwards  made  the  Second  Nun's  tale ; 
and  the  passionate  religious  fervour  and  repentance  of 
this  poem  has  seemed  to  point  to  a  period  of  penitence 
in  his  life  for  his  early  sensuousness.  It  did  not  last 
long,  and  he  now  wrote  the  Story  of  Grisilde,  the  Clerk's 
tale ;  the  Story  of  Constance,  the  Man  of  Law's  tale ; 
the  Monk's  tale ;  the  Compleynt  of  Mars;  the  Com- 
pleynt  to  his  Lady;  Anelida  and  Arcyte;  Troilus  and 
Criseyde;  the  Lines  to  Adam  Scrivener;  To  Rose- 
mounde;  The  Parlemeni  of  Foules ;  Boece,  a  prose  ver- 
sion of  the  De  Consolatione ;  the  Hous  of  Fame,  and 
the  Legende  of  Good  Women.  In  these  two  last  poems 
we  may  trace,  not  only  an  Italian,  but  a  classical  period 
in  the  work  of  Chaucer.  This  is  the  record  of  the  work 
of  the  years  between  1373  and  1384  ;  and  almost  all 
these  poems  are  either  influenced  by  Dante  or  adapted 


11       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      63 

from  Petrarca  and  Boccaccio.  In  the  passion  with  which 
Chaucer  describes  the  ruined  love  of  Troilus  or  Anelida, 
some  have  traced  the  lingering  sorrow  of  his  early  Iofc 
affair.  But  if  this  be  true,  it  was  now  passing  away,  for 
in  the  creation  of  Pandarus  in  the  Troilus,  and  in  the 
delightful  fun  of  that  enchanting  poem  the  Parkment 
of  Foules,  a  new  Chaucer  appears,  the  humorous  poet 
of  some  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.  The  noble  art  of  the 
Parlement,  as  well  as  that  of  the  Troilus,  lifts  Chaucer 
already  on  to  that  eminence  apart  where  sit  the  great 
poets  of  the  world.  Nothing  like  this  had  appeared 
before  in  England.  Nothing  like  it  appeared  again  till 
Spenser.  In  the  active  business  life  he  led  during  the 
period  his  poetry  was  likely  to  win  a  closer  grasp  on 
human  life,  for  he  was  not  only  employed  on  service 
abroad,  but  also  at  home.  In  1374  he  was  Comptroller 
of  the  Wool  Customs,  in  1382  of  the  Petty  Customs, 
and  in  1386  Knight  of  the  Shire  for  Kent. 

42.  Chaucer's  English  Period.  —  It  is  in  the  next 
period,  from  1384  to  1390,  that  he  left  behind  (except 
in  the  borrowing  of  his  subjects)  Italian  influence  as  he 
had  left  French,  and  became  entirely  himself,  entirely 
English.  The  comparative  poverty  in  which  he  now 
lived,  and  the  loss  of  his  ofifices  in  1386,  for  in  John  of 
Gaunt's  absence  court  favour  was  withdrawn  from  him, 
and  the  death  of  his  wife  in  1387,  may  have  given  him 
more  time  for  study  and  the  retired  life  of  a  poet.  His 
appointment  as  Clerk  of  the  Works  in  1389  brought  him 
again   into  contact  with    men.     He  superintended  the 


64  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

repairs  and  building  at  the  Palace  of  Westminster,  the 
Tower,  and  St.  George's  Chapel,  Windsor,  till  July,  1391, 
when  he  was  superseded,  and  lived  on  pensions  allotted 
to  him  by  Richard  II.  and  by  Henry  IV.,  after  he  had 
sent  Henry  in  1399  his  Compleint  to  his  Purse,  Before 
1390,  however,  he  had  added  to  his  great  work  its  most 
English  tales ;  those  of  the  Miller,  the  Reeve,  the  Cook, 
the  Wife  of  Bath,  the  Merchant,  the  Friar,  the  Nun's 
Priest,  the  Pardoner,  and  perhaps  the  Sompnour.  The 
Prologue  was  probably  written  in  1388.  In  these,  in 
their  humour,  in  their  vividness  of  portraiture,  in  their 
ease  of  narration,  and  in  the  variety  of  their  characters, 
Chaucer  shines  supreme.  A  few  smaller  poems  belong 
to  this  time,  such  as  the  Former  Age  ;  Fortune  ;  Truth  ; 
Gentilesse  ;  and  the  Lak  of  Steadfastnesse. 

During  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life,  which  may  be 
called  the  period  of  his  decay,  he  wrote  some  small 
poems,  and  along  with  the  Compleynt  of  Venus,  and  a 
prose  treatise  on  the  Astrolabe,  three  more  Canterbury 
tales,  the  Canon's-yeoman's,  Manciple's,  and  Parson's. 
The  last  was  written  the  year  of  his  death,  1400.  Having 
done  this  work  he  died  in  a  house  under  the  shadow 
of  the  Abbey  of  Westminster.  Within  the  walls  of  the 
Abbey  Church,  the  first  of  the  poets  who  lies  there, 
that  "  sacred  and  happy  spirit  "  sleeps. 

43.  Chaucer's  Character.  —  Born  of  the  tradesman  class, 
Chaucer  was  in  every  sense  of  the  word  one  of  our  finest 
gentlemen :  tender,  graceful  in  thought,  glad  of  heart, 
humorous,  and  satirical  without  unkindness ;  sensitive  to 


II      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      65 

every  change  of  feeling  in  himself  and  others,  and  there- 
fore full  of  sympathy ;  brave  in  misfortune,  even  to  mirth, 
and  doing  well  and  with  careful  honesty  all  he  undertook. 
His  first  and  great  delight  was  in  human  nature,  and  he 
makes  us  love  the  noble  characters  in  his  poems,  and  feel 
with  kindUness  towards  the  baser  and  ruder  sort.  He 
never  sneers,  for  he  had  a  wide  charity,  and  we  can 
always  smile  in  his  pages  at  the  follies  and  forgive  the 
sins  of  men.  He  had  a  quiet  and  true  religion,  much 
like  that  we  conceive  Shakespeare  to  have  had ;  nor  was 
he  without  a  high  philosophic  strain.  Both  were  kept  in 
order  by  his  imagination  and  his  humour.  He  had  a 
true  and  chivalrous  regard  for  women  of  his  own  class, 
and  his  wife  and  he  ought  to  have  been  very  happy  if 
they  had  fulfilled  the  ideal  he  had  of  marriage.  He  lived 
in  aristocratic  society,  and  yet  he  thought  him  the  great- 
est gentleman  who  was  the  most  courteous  and  the  most 
virtuous.  He  lived  frankly  among  men,  and  as  we  have 
seen,  saw  many  different  types  of  men,  and  in  his  own 
time  filled  many  parts  as  a  man  of  the  world  and  of  busi- 
ness. Yet,  with  all  this  active  and  observant  Ufe,  he  was 
commonly  very  quiet  and  kept  much  to  himself.  "  Flee 
from  the  press  and  dwell  with  steadfastness  "  is  the  first 
line  of  his  last  ballad,  and  it  embodies,  with  the  rest  of 
that  personal  poem,  the  serious  part  of  his  life.  The 
Host  in  the  Tales  japes  at  him  for  his  lonely,  abstracted 
air.  "Thou  lookest  as  thou  wouldest  find  a  hare.  And 
ever  on  the  ground  I  see  thee  stare."  Being  a  good 
scholar,  he  read  morning  and  night  alone,  and  he  says 

F 


^  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

that  after  his  (office)  work  he  would  go  home  and  sit  at 
another  book  as  dumb  as  a  stone,  till  his  look  was  dazed. 
While  at  study  and  when  he  was  making  of  songs  and 
ditties,  "nothing  else  that  God  had  made"  had  any  in- 
terest for  him.  There  was  but  one  thing  that  roused  him 
then,  and  that  too  he  liked  to  enjoy  alone.  It  was  the 
beauty  of  the  morning  and  the  fields,  the  woods,  and 
streams,  and  flowers,  and  the  singing  of  the  little  birds. 
This  made  his  heart  full  of  revel  and  solace,  and  when 
spring  came  after  winter,  he  rose  with  the  lark  and  cried 
"  Farewell,  my  book  and  my  devotion."  He  was  a  keen 
observer  of  the  nature  he  cared  for,  especially  of  colour. 
He  loved  the  streams  and  the  birds  and  soft  grassy 
places  and  green  trees,  and  all  sweet,  ordered  gardens, 
and  flowers.  He  could  spend  the  whole  day,  he  says,  in 
gazing  alone  on  the  daisy,  and  though  what  he  says  is 
symbolic,  yet  we  may  trace  through  the  phrase  that 
lonely  delight  in  natural  scenery  which  is  so  special  a 
mark  of  our  later  poets.  He  lived  thus  a  double  life,  in 
and  out  of  the  world,  but  never  a  gloomy  one.  For  he 
was  fond  of  mirth  and  good-living,  and  when  he  grew 
towards  age,  was  portly  of  waist,  no  poppet  to  embrace. 
But  he  kept  to  the  end  his  elfish  countenance,  the  shy, 
delicate,  half-mischievous  face  which  looked  on  men 
from  its  gray  hair  and  forked  beard,  and  was  set  off  by 
his  dark-coloured  dress  and  hood.  A  knife  and  ink-horn 
hung  on  his  dress ;  we  see  a  rosary  in  his  hand ;  and 
when  he  was  alone  he  walked  swiftly. 

44.  The  Canterbury  Tales.  —  Of  his  work  it  is  not 


n      FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      6/ 

easy  to  speak  briefly,  because  of  its  great  variety.  Enough 
has  been  said  of  it,  with  the  exception  of  his  most  com- 
plete creation,  the  Canterbury  Tales.  It  will  be  seen 
from  the  dates  given  above  that  they  were  not  written  at 
one  time.  They  are  not,  and  cannot  be  looked  on  as  a 
whole.  Many  were  written  independently,  and  then  fitted 
into  the  framework  of  the  Prologue.  Many,  which  he 
intended  to  write  in  order  to  complete  his  scheme,  were 
never  written.  But  we  may  say  that  the  full  idea  of  his 
work  took  shape  about  1385,  after  he  had  finished  The 
Legende  of  Good  Women,  and  that  the  whole  existing 
body  of  the  Tales  was  completed,  with  the  exception  of 
the  last  three  already  mentioned,  before  the  close  of 
1390.  At  intervals,  from  time  to  time,  he  added  a  tale; 
in  fact,  the  whole  was  done  much  in  the  same  way  as 
Tennyson  has  written  his  Idylls  of  the  King.  The  manner 
in  which  he  knitted  them  together  was  very  simple,  and 
likely  to  please  the  English  people.  The  holiday  ex- 
cursions of  the  time  were  the  pilgrimages,  and  the  most 
famous  and  the  pleasantest  pilgrimage  to  go,  especially 
for  Londoners,  was  the  three  or  four  days'  journey  to  see 
the  shrine  of  St.  Thomas  at  Canterbury.  Persons  of  all 
ranks  in  life  met  and  travelled  together,  starting  from  a 
London  inn.  Chaucer  had  probably  made  the  pilgrimage 
to  Canterbury  in  the  spring  of  1385  or  1387,  and  was  led 
by  this  experience  to  the  framework  in  which  he  set  his 
pictures  of  life.  He  grouped  around  the  jovial  host  of 
the  Tabard  Inn  men  and  women  of  every  class  of  society 
in  England,  set  them  on  horseback  to  ride  to  Canterbury 


68  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

and  home  again,  intending  to  make  each  of  them  tell 
tales.  No  one  could  hit  off  a  character  better,  and  in 
his  Prologue,  and  in  the  prologues  to  the  several  Tales, 
a  great  part  of  the  new,  vigorous  English  society  which 
had  grown  up  since  Edward  I.  is  painted  with  astonishing 
vividness.  "  I  see  all  the  pilgrims  in  the  Canterbury 
Tales ^^  says  Dryden,  "  their  humours,  their  features,  and 
the  very  dress,  as  distinctly  as  if  I  had  supped  with  them 
at  the  Tabard  in  Southwark."  The  Tales  themselves 
take  in  the  whole  range  of  the  poetry  and  the  life  of  the 
Middle  Ages ;  the  legend  of  the  saint,  the  romance  of  the 
knight,  the  wonderful  fables  of  the  traveller,  the  coarse 
tale  of  common  life,  the  love  story,  the  allegory,  the 
animal-fable,  and  the  satirical  lay.  And  they  are  pure 
tales.  He  is  not  in  any  sense  a  dramatic  writer ;  he  is 
our  greatest  story-teller  in  verse.  All  the  best  tales  are 
told  easily,  sincerely,  with  great  grace,  and  yet  with  so 
much  homeliness,  that  a  child  would  understand  them. 
Sometimes  his  humour  is  broad,  sometimes  sly,  some- 
times gay,  but  it  is  also  exquisite  and  affectionate.  His 
pathos  does  not  go  into  the  far  depths  of  sorrow  and  pain, 
but  it  is  always  natural.  He  can  bring  tears  into  our  eyes, 
and  he  can  make  us  smile  or  be  sad  as  he  pleases. 

His  eye  for  colour  was  superb  and  distinctive.  He 
had  a  very  fine  ear  for  the  music  of  verse,  and  the  tale 
and  the  verse  go  together  like  voice  and  music.  Indeed, 
so  softly  flowing  and  bright  are  they,  that  to  read  them 
is  like  listening  in  a  meadow  full  of  sunshine  to  a  clear 
stream  rippling  over  its  bed  of  pebbles.     The  English  in 


n       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      69 

which  they  are  written  is  almost  the  English  of  our 
time;  and  it  is  literary  English.  Chaucer  made  our 
tongue  into  a  true  means  of  poetry.  He  did  more,  he 
welded  together  the  French  and  English  elements  in 
our  language  and  made  them  into  one  English  tool  for 
the  use  of  literature,  and  all  our  prose  writers  and  poets 
derive  their  tongue  from  the  language  of  the  Canterbury 
Tales.  They  give  him  honour  for  this,  but  still  more  for 
that  he  was  so  fine  an  artist.  Poetry  is  an  art,  and  the 
artist  in  poetry  is  one  who  writes  for  pure  and  noble 
pleasure  the  thing  he  writes,  and  who  desires  to  give  to 
others  the  same  or  a  similar  pleasure  by  his  poems 
which  he  had  in  writing  them.  The  things  he  most 
cares  about  are  that  the  form  in  which  he  puts  his 
thoughts  or  feelings  may  be  perfectly  fitting  to  the  sub- 
jects :  and  that  subject,  matter,  and  form  should  be  as 
beautiful  as  possible  —  but  for  these  he  cares  very 
greatly ;  and  in  this  Chaucer  stands  apart  from  the  other 
poets  of  his  time.  Gower  wrote  with  a  set  object,  and 
nothing  can  be  less  beautiful  than  the  form  in  which  he 
puts  his  tales.  The  author  of  Piers  Plowman  wrote  with 
the  object  of  reform  in  social  and  ecclesiastical  affairs, 
and  his  form  is  uncouth  and  harsh.  Chaucer  wrote  be- 
cause he  was  full  of  emotion  and  joy  in  his  own  thoughts, 
and  thought  that  others  would  weep  and  be  glad  with 
him,  and  the  only  time  he  ever  moralises  is  in  the  tales  of 
the  Canon's  Yeoman  and  the  Manciple,  written  in  his  de- 
cay. He  has,  then,  the  best  right  to  the  poet's  name.  He 
is,  within  his  own  range,  the  clearest  of  English  artists. 


70  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Finally,  his  position  in  the  history  of  English  poetry 
and  towards  his  own  time  resembles  that  of  Dante,  whom 
he  loved  so  well,  in  the  history  and  poetry  of  Italy. 
Dante  embodied  all  the  past  elements  of  the  Middle 
Ages  in  his  work,  and  he  began  the  literature,  the 
thoughts,  and  the  power  of  a  new  age.  He  was  the 
Evening  Star  of  the  Mediaeval  day  and  the  Morning 
Star  of  the  Renaissance.  Chaucer  also  represented  med- 
iaevalism  though  in  a  much  more  incomplete  way  than 
Dante,  but  he  had,  so  far  as  poetry  in  England  is  con- 
cerned, more  of  the  Renaissance  spirit  than  Dante.  He 
is  more  humanistic  than  even  Spenser.  England  needed 
to  live  more  than  a  century  to  get  up  to  the  level  of 
Chaucer.  Lastly,  both  Dante  and  he  made  their  own 
country's  tongue  the  tongue  of  noble  literature. 

45.  The  Travels  of  Sir  John  Maundevile  belong  to 
this  place  which  treats  of  story-telling.  Whatever  other 
English  prose  arose  in  the  fourteenth  century  was  theo- 
logical or  scientific.  John  of  Trevisa  had,  among  other 
English  translations,  turned  into  English  prose,  1387, 
the  Polychronicon  of  Ranulf  Higden.  Various  other 
prose  treatises,  beginning  with  those  of  Richard  RoUe, 
had  appeared.  Chaucer  himself  translated  two  of  his 
tales,  that  of  the  Parson,  and  that  of  Meliboeus,  from 
the  French  into  an  involved  prose ;  and  wrote  in  the 
same  rude  vehicle,  his  Boece,  and  his  book  on  the 
Astrolabe.  We  have  already  noticed  the  prose  of  Wyc- 
lif.  But  Maundevile' s  Travels  is  a  story-book.  Maun- 
devile  himself,   the   quaint   and   pleasant   knight,  is   as 


11       FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER      7I 

much  an  invention  as  Robinson  Crusoe,  and  the  travels 
as  much  an  imposture  as  Geoffrey's  History  of  the  Kings 
of  Britain.  But  they  had  a  similar  charm,  and  when 
made  up  originally  by  Jean  de  Bourgogne,  a  physician 
who  died  at  Li^ge  in  1372,  were  received  with  delight 
and  belief  by  the  world,  and  nowhere  with  greater 
pleasure  than  in  England,  where  they  were  translated 
into  English  prose  by  an  anonymous  writer  of  the  late 
fourteenth  or  more  probably  fifteenth  century.  The 
prose  is  garrulous  and  facile,  gliding  with  a  pleasure 
in  itself  from  legend  to  travellers'  tales,  from  dreams 
to  facts,  from  St.  Albans  to  Jerusalem,  from  Cairo  to 
Cathay.  The  book  became  a  model  of  prose,  and  may 
even  be  called  an  early  classic. 


"^2  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 


CHAPTER  III 

FROM  CHAUCER'S  DEATH    14OO,   TO  ELIZABETH,  1 55 8 

46.  The  Fifteenth  Century  Poetry. — The  last  poems 
of  Chaucer  and  Langland  bring  our  story  up  to  1400. 
The  hundred  years  that  followed  are  the  most  barren 
in  our  literature.  The  influence  of  Chaucer  lasted,  and 
of  the  poems  attributed  to  him,  but  now  rejected  by 
scholars,  some  certainly  belong  to  the  first  half  of  this 
century.  There  are  fifty  poems,  making  up  1 7,000  lines, 
which  have  been  wrongly  attributed  to  Chaucer,  and 
though  some  of  them  were  contemporary  with  him,  a 
number  are  by  imitators  of  his  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
Some  of  these  have  a  great  charm.  The  Cuckoo  and 
the  Nightingale  is  a  pleasant  thing.  The  Complaint  of 
the  Black  Knight  is  by  Lydgate.  The  Court  of  Love 
and  Chaucer's  Dream  are  good  but  late  imitations  of 
the  master.  The  Flower  and  the  Leaf  is  by  a  woman 
whose  name  we  should  like  to  know,  for  the  poem  is 
lovely.  " Moder  of  God  and  Virgin  undefouled"  is  by 
Hoccleve,  and  was  long  attributed  to  Chaucer.  The 
triple  Roundel,  Merciles  Beaute,  is  given  by  Professor 
Skeat  to  Chaucer,  and  at  least  is  worthy  of  the  poet; 


Ill  FROM   CHAUCER  TO   ELIZABETH  73 

and  the  Amorous  Compldnt  and  a  Ballade  of  Com- 
pleynt,  may  possibly  be  also  his,  There  was  then  a 
considerable  school  of  imitators,  who  followed  the  style, 
who  had  some  of  the  imaginative  spirit,  but  who  failed 
in  the  music  and  the  art  of  Chaucer. 

47.  Thomas  Hoccleve  and  John  LySgate. — Two  of 
these  imitators  stand  out  from  the  rest  by  the  extent 
of  their  work.  Hoccleve,  a  London  man,  was  a  monot- 
onous versifier  of  the  reigns  of  the  three  Henries,  but 
he  loved  Chaucer  well.  In  the  MS.  of  his  longest 
poem,  the  Governail  of  Princes,  written  before  14 13, 
he  caused  to  be  drawn,  with  fond  idolatry,  the  portrait 
of  his  "master  dear  and  father  reverent,"  who  had 
enlumined  all  the  land  with  his  books.  He  had  a 
style  of  his  own.  Sometimes,  in  his  playful  imitations 
of  Chaucer's  Balades,  and  in  his  devotional  poetry, 
such  as  his  Moder  of  God,  he  reached  excellence ;  but 
his  didactic  and  controversial  aims  finally  overwhelmed 
his  poetry. 

48.  John  Lydgate  was  a  more  worthy  follower  of 
Chaucer.  A  monk  of  Bury,  and  thirty  years  of  age 
when  Chaucer  died,  he  yet  wrote  nothing  of  much 
importance  till  the  reign  of  Henry  V.  He  was  a  gay 
and  pleasant  person,  though  a  long-winded  poet,  and 
he  seems  to  have  lived  even  in  his  old  age,  when  he 
recalk  himself  as  a  boy  "weeping  for  naught,  anon 
after  glad,"  the  fresh  and  natural  Ufe  of  one  who  en- 
joyed everything ;  but,  like  many  gay  persons,  he  had 
a  vein  of  melancholy,  and   some  of  his  best  work,  at 


74  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CitAf. 

least  in  the  poet  Gray's  opinion,  belongs  to  the  realms 
of  pathetic  and  moral  poetry.  But  there  was  scarcely 
any  literary  work  he  could  not  do.  He  rhymed  history, 
ballads,  and  legends,  till  the  monastery  was  delighted. 
He  made  pageants  for  Henry  VL,  masques  and  May- 
games  for  aldermen,  mummeries  for  the  Lord  Mayor, 
and  satirical  ballads  on  the  foUies  of  the  day.  It  is 
impossible  here  to  mention  the  tenth  part  of  his  mul- 
tifarious works,  many  of  which  are  as  yet  unpubHshed. 
They  are  a  strange  mixture  of  the  poet  striving  to  be 
religious,  and  of  the  monk  carried  away  by  his  passions 
and  his  gaiety.  He  may  have  been  educated  at  Oxford, 
and  perhaps  travelled  in  France  and  Italy;  he  knew 
the  literature  of  his  time,  and  he  even  dabbled  in  the 
sciences.  He  was  as  much  a  lover  of  nature  as  Chau- 
cer, but  cannot  make  us  feel  the  beauty  of  nature  in 
the  same  way.  It  is  his  story-telling  which  Hnks  him 
closest  to  his  master.  His  three  chief  poems  are,  first, 
The  Troye  Book,  which  is  adapted  from  Guido's  His- 
toria  Trojana ;  secondly,  the  Storie  of  Thebes,  which 
is  introduced  as  an  additional  Canterbury  Tale,  and  is 
worked  up  from  French  romances  on  this  subject. 
The  third  is  the  Falles  of  Princes,  1424-5,  at  which 
he  worked  till  he  was  sixty  years  of  age.  It  is  a  free 
translation  of  a  French  version  of  Boccaccio's  De  Cas- 
ibus  Virorum  et  Feminarum  Illustrium.  It  tells  the 
tragic  fates  of  great  men  and  women  from  the  time 
of  Adam  to  the  capture  of  King  John  of  France  at 
Poitiers.     The  plan  is  picturesque ;  the  sorrowful  dead 


in  FROM    CHAUCER    TO    ELIZABETH  75 

appear  before  Boccaccio,  pensive  in  his  library,  and 
each  tells  of  his  downfall.  This  is  Lydgatc's  most  im- 
portant, but  by  no  means  his  best,  poem ;  and  it  had 
its  influence  on  the  future,  for  in  the  Mirror  for  Mag- 
istrates, at  least  eight  Elizabethan  poets  united  at  differ- 
ent times  to  supplement  his  Falles  of  Princes. 

A  few  minor  poets  do  no  more  now  than  keep  poetry 
alive.  Another  version  of  the  Troy  Story  in  Henry  VI. 's 
time ;  Hugh  de  Campeden's  Sidrac,  Thomas  Chestre's 
Lay  of  Sir  Launfal,  and  the  translation  of  the  Earl  of 
Toulouse,  prove  that  romances  were  still  taken  from  the 
French.  William  Lichfield's  Complaint  between  God  and 
Man,  and  William  Nassington's  Mirrour  of  Life,  carry 
on  the  rehgious,  and  the  Tournament  of  Tottenham  the 
satirical,  poetry.  John  Capgrave's  translation  of  the  Life 
of  St.  Catherine  is  less  known  than  his  Chronicle  of 
England  dedicated  to  Edward  IV.  He,  with  John  Hard- 
ing, a  soldier  of  Agincourt,  whose  rhyming  Chronicle 
belongs  to  Edward  IV.'s  reign,  continue  the  historical 
poetry.  A  number  of  obscure  versifiers,  Thomas  Norton, 
and  George  Ripley  who  wrote  on  alchemy,  and  Dame 
Juliana  Berners'  book  on  Hunting,  bring  us  to  the  reign 
of  Henry  VII.,  when  Skelton  first  began  to  write.  Mean- 
while poetry,  which  had  decayed  in  England,  was 
flourishing  in  Scotland. 

49.  Ballads,  lays,  fragments  of  romances,  had  been 
sung  in  England  from  the  earliest  times,  and  popular 
tales  and  jokes  took  form  in  short  lyric  pieces,  to  be  ac- 
companied with  music  and  dancing.    In  fact,  the  ballad 


^6  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHA?. 

went  over  the  whole  land  among  the  people.  The  trader, 
the  apprentices,  and  poor  of  the  cities,  the  peasantry,  had 
their  own  songs.  They  tended  to  collect  themselves 
round  some  legendary  name  like  Robin  Hood,  or  some 
historical  character  made  legendary,  like  Randolf,  Earl 
of  Chester.  In  the  fourteenth  century,  Sloth,  in  Pi^rs 
Plowman,  does  not  know  his  paternoster,  but  he  does 
know  the  rhymes  of  these  heroes.  Robin  Hood  was  then 
well  known  in  1370.  A  crowd  of  minstrels  sang  them 
through  city  and  village.  The  very  friar  sang  them, "  and 
made  his  English  swete  upon  his  tonge."  The  Tale  of 
Gamelyn  is  a  piece  of  minstrel  poetry,  of  the  forest  type, 
and  drew  to  it,  as  we  know,  the  attention  of  Chaucer. 
Chaucer  and  Langland  mention  the  French  ballads  which 
were  sung  in  London,  and  these  were  freely  translated. 
The  popular  song,  "  When  Adam  dalf  and  Eve  span," 
was  a  type  of  a  class  of  socialistic  ballads.  The  Battle  of 
Otterbourne  and  The  Hunting  of  the  Cheviot  were  no 
doubt  composed  in  the  fourteenth  century,  but  were  not 
published  till  now.  Two  collections  of  Robin  Hood  bal- 
lads and  The  Nut  Brown  Maid,  printed  about  the  begin- 
ning of  the  sixteenth  century,  show  that  a  fresh  interest 
had  then  awakened  in  this  outlaw  literature  to  which  we 
owe  so  much.  It  was  not,  however,  till  much  later  that 
any  large  collection  of  ballads  was  made ;  and  few,  in  the 
form  we  possess  them,  can  be  dated  farther  back  than 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 

50.   Prose  Literature.  —  Four  men  continued  English 
prose  into  the  fifteenth  century.     The  religious  war  be- 


Ill  FROM   CHAUCER   TO   ELIZABETH  // 

tween  the  Lollards  and  the  Church  raged  during  the  reigns 
of  Henry  V.  and  Henry  VI.,  and  in  the  time  of  the 
latter  Reginald  Pecock  took  it  out  of  Latin  into  homely 
English.  He  fought  the  Lollards  with  their  own  weapons, 
with  public  sermons  in  English,  and  with  tracts  in  Eng- 
lish ;  and  after  1449,  when  Bishop  of  Chichester,  published 
his  works,  The  Repressor  of  overmuch  Blaming  of  the 
Clergy  and  The  Book  of  Faith.  They  pleased  neither 
party.  The  Lollards  disliked  them  because  they  defended 
the  customs  and  doctrines  of  the  Church.  Churchmen 
burnt  them  because  they  agreed  with  the  "  Bible-men," 
that  the  Bible  was  the  only  rule  of  faith.  Both  abjured 
them  because  they  said  that  doctrines  were  to  be  proved 
from  the  Bible  by  reason.  Pecock  is  the  first  of  all  the 
Church  theologians  who  wrote  in  English,  and  his  books 
are  good  examples  of  our  early  prose. 

Sir  John  Fortescue's  book  on  the  Difference  between 
Absolute  and  Limited  Monarchy,  in  Edward  IV. 's  reign, 
is  less  fine  an  example  of  the  prose  of  English  politics 
than  Sir  Thomas  Malory's  Morte  Darthur  is  of  the 
prose  of  chivalry.  This  book,  arranged  and  modelled 
into  a  labyrinthine  story  from  French  and  contemporary 
English  materials,  is  the  work  of  a  man  of  genius,  and 
was  ended  in  the  ninth  year  of  Edward  IV.,  fifteen  years 
before  Caxton  had  finished  printing  it.  Its  prose,  in  its 
joyous  simplicity,  may  well  have  charmed  Caxton,  who 
printed  it  with  all  the  care  of  one  who  "  loved  the  noble 
acts  of  chivalry."  Caxton's  own  work  added  to  the 
prose  of  England.     Bom  of  Kentish  parents,  he  went  to 


y8  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  Low  Countries  in  1440,  and  learned  his  trade.  The 
first  book  said  to  have  been  printed  in  this  country  was 
The  Game  and  Playe  of  the  Chesse,  1474.  The  first  book 
that  bears  the  inscription,  "  Imprynted  by  me,  Wilham 
Caxton,  at  Westmynstre,"  is  The  Dictes  and  Sayings  of 
Philosophers.  But  the  first  English  book  Caxton  made, 
and  finished  at  Cologne  in  147 1,  was  his  translation  of 
the  Recuyell  of  the  Historyes  of  Troy,  and  in  this  book, 
and  in  his  translation  of  Reynard  the  Fox  from  the  Dutch, 
in  his  translation  of  the  Golden  Legend,  and  his  re- 
editing  of  Trevisa's  Chronicle,  in  which  he  "  changed  the 
rude  and  old  EngUsh,"  he  kept,  by  the  fixing  power  of 
the  press,  the  Midland  English,  which  Chaucer  had  es- 
tablished as  the  tongue  of  Hterature,  from  further  degrada- 
tion. Forty  years  later  Tyndale's  New  Testament  fixed 
it  more  firmly,  and  the  Elizabethan  writers  kept  it  in  its 
purity. 

51.  The  Foundations  of  the  Elizabethan  Literature.  — 
The  first  of  these  may  be  found  in  Caxton's  work.  John 
Shirley,  a  gentleman  of  good  family,  and  Chaucer's  con- 
temporary, who  died,  a  very  old  man,  in  1449,  deserves 
mention  as  a  transcriber  and  preserver  of  the  works  of 
Chaucer  and  Lydgate,  but  Caxton  fulfilled  the  task  Shir- 
ley had  begun.  He  printed  Chaucer  and  Lydgate  and 
Gower  with  zealous  care.  He  printed  the  Chronicle  of 
the  Brut ;  he  secured  for  us  the  Morte  Darthur.  He 
had  a  tradesman's  interest  in  publishing  the  romances, 
for  they  were  the  reading  of  the  day;  but  he  could 
scarcely  have  done  better  for  the  interests  of  the  coming 


ra  FROM   CHAUCER   TO   ELIZABETH  79 

literature.  These  books  nourished  the  imagination  of 
England,  and  supplied  poet  after  poet  with  fine  subjects 
for  work,  or  fine  frames  for  their  subjects.  He  had  not 
a  tradesman's,  but  a  loving  literary,  interest  in  printing  the 
old  English  poets;  and  in  sending  them  out  from  his 
press  Caxton  kept  up  the  continuity  of  English  poetry. 
The  poets  after  him  at  once  began  on  the  models  of 
Chaucer  and  Gower  and  Lydgate  ;  and  the  books  them- 
selves being  more  widely  read,  not  only  made  poets  but 
a  public  that  loved  poetry.  The  imprinting  of  old  Eng- 
lish poetry  was  one  of  the  sources  in  this  century  of  the 
Elizabethan  literature. 

The  second  source  was  the  growth  of  an  interest  in 
classic  literature.  All  through  the  last  two-thirds  of  this 
century,  though  so  Httle  creative  work  was  done,  the 
interest  in  that  literature  grew  among  men  of  the  upper 
classes.  The  Wars  of  the  Roses  did  not  stop  the  reading 
of  books.  The  Paston  Letters,  1422-1509,  the  corre- 
spondence of  a  country  family  from  Henry  VI.  to  Henry 
VII.,  are  pleasantly,  even  correctly  written,  and  contain 
passages  which  refer  to  translations  of  the  classics  and  to 
manuscripts  sent  to  and  fro  for  reading.  A  great  number 
of  French  translations  of  the  Latin  classics  were  read  in 
England.  Henry  V.  and  VI.,  Edward  IV.,  and  some  of 
the  great  nobles  were  lovers  of  books.  Men  like  Duke 
Humphrey  of  Gloucester  made  libraries  and  brought  over 
Italian  scholars  to  England  to  translate  Greek  works. 
There  were  even  scholars  in  England,  like  John,  Lord 
Jiptoft,  Earl  of  Worcester,  who  had  won  fame  iji  the 


80  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

schools  of  Italy,  and  whose  translations  of  Cicero's  De 
Amicitid  and  of  Caesar's  De  Bella  Gallico  prove,  with  his 
Latin  letters,  how  worthy  he  was  of  the  praise  of  Padua 
and  the  gratitude  of  Oxford.  He  added  many  MSS.  to 
the  library  of  Duke  Humphrey.  The  two  great  universi- 
ties were  also  now  reformed ;  new  colleges  were  founded, 
new  libraries  were  established,  Greek,  Latin,  and  Italian 
MSS.  were  collected  in  them.  The  New  Learning  had 
begun  to  move  in  these  great  centres.  A  number  of  uni- 
versity men  went  to  study  in  Italy,  to  Padua,  Bologna, 
and  Ferrara.  Among  these  were  Robert  Fleramyng, 
Dean  of  Lincoln;  John  Gunthorpe,  Dean  of  Wells; 
William  Grey,  Bishop  of  Ely ;  John  Phreas,  Provost 
of  Balliol ;  William  Sellynge,  Fellow  of  All  Souls,  all  of 
whom  collected  MSS.  in  Italy  of  the  classics,  with  which 
they  enriched  the  libraries  of  England.  It  is  in  this  grow- 
ing influence  of  the  great  classic  models  of  literature  that 
we  find  the  gathering  together  of  another  of  the  sources 
of  that  Elizabethan  literature  which  seems  to  flower  so 
suddenly,  but  which  had  been  long  preparing. 

52.  The  Italian  Revival  of  Learning. — The  impulse, 
as  we  see,  came  from  Italy,  and  was  due  to  that  great 
humanistic  movement  which  we  call  the  Renaissance, 
and  which  had  properly  begun  in  Italy  with  Dante  and 
his  circle,  with  Petrarca  and  Boccaccio,  with  Giotto  and 
Nicolo  Pisano.  It  carried  with  it,  as  it  went  on  reviving 
the  thought,  literature  and  law  of  Greece  and  Rome,  the 
overthrow  of  Feudalism  and  the  romantic  poetry  of  the 
Middle  Ages.   It  made  classic  literature  and  art  the  basM 


Ill  FROM    CHAUCER   TO    ELIZABETH  8 1 

of  a  new  literature  and  a  new  art,  which  was  not  at  first 
imitative,  save  of  excellence  of  form.  It  began  a  new 
worship  of  beauty,  a  new  worship  of  knowledge,  and  a 
new  statesmanship.  It  initiated  those  new  views  of  man 
and  of  human  life,  of  its  aims,  rights,  and  duties,  of  its 
pleasures  and  pains,  of  religion,  of  knowledge,  and  of  the 
whole  course  of  the  history  of  the  world,  which  produced, 
as  they  fell  on  various  types  of  humanity,  the  Refor- 
mation, a  semi-pagan  freedom  of  thought  and  life,  the 
theories  and  ideas  which  took  such  furious  form  in  the 
French  Revolution,  the  boundless  effort  which  attempted 
all  things,  and  the  boundless  curiosity  which  penetrated 
into  every  realm  of  thought  and  feeling,  and  considered 
nothing  too  sacred  or  too  remote  for  investigation  by 
knowledge  or  for  representation  in  art.  At  every  one  of 
those  points  it  has  affected  literature  up  to  the  present  day. 
No  sooner  had  Petrarca  and  Boccaccio  started  it  than 
Italy  began  to  send  eager  searchers  over  Europe  and 
chiefly  to  Constantinople.  For  more  than  seventy  years 
before  that  city  was  taken  by  the  Turk,  shoals  of  MSS. 
had  been  carried  from  it  into  Italy  together  with  a  host 
of  objects  of  ancient  art.  Before  1440  the  best  Latin 
classics  and  many  of  the  Greek,  were  known,  and  were 
soon  studied,  lectured  on,  imitated,  and  translated.  By 
1460  Italy,  in  all  matters  of  thought,  life,  art,  literature, 
and  knowledge,  was  like  a  hive  of  bees  in  a  warm  sum- 
mer. We  have  seen  with  what  slowness  this  vast  impulse 
was  felt  in  England  in  the  fifteenth  century.  But  it  had 
begun,  and  in  Elizabeth's  time,  pouring  into  England,  it 

G 


82  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

went  forth  conquering  and  to  conquer.  As  France 
dominated  the  literature  of  England  after  the  Conquest, 
till  Chaucer,  touched  by  Italy,  made  it  EngUsh,  so  Italy 
dominated  it  till  Shakespeare  and  his  fellows,  touched 
also  by  Italy,  made  it  again  English. 

53.   There    was    now  a   Transition    Period    both    in 

Prose  and  Poetry The   reigns   of  Richard   III.   and 

Henry  VII.  brought  forth  no  prose  of  any  worth,  but 
the  country  awakened  into  its  first  Renaissance  with  the 
accession  of  Henry  VIII.,  1509.  John  Colet,  Dean  of  St. 
Paul's,  with  William  Lilly,  the  grammarian,  set  on  foot  a 
school  where  the  classics  were  taught  in  a  new  and  prac- 
tical way,  and  between  the  year  1500  and  the  Reforma- 
tion twenty  grammar-schools  were  established.  Erasmus, 
who  had  all  the  enthusiasm  which  sets  others  on  fire,  had 
come  to  England  in  1497,  and  found  Grocyn  and  Linacre 
at  Oxford,  teaching  the  Greek  they  had  learnt  from  Chal- 
condylas  at  Florence.  He  learnt  Greek  from  them,  and 
found  eager  admiration  of  his  own  scholarship  in  Bishop 
Fisher,  Sir  Thomas  More,  Colet,  and  Archbishop  War- 
ham.  From  these  men  a  liberal  and  moderate  theology 
spread,  which  soon,  however,  perished  in  the  heats  of  the 
Reformation.  But  the  New  Learning  they  had  started 
grew  rapidly,  assisted  by  the  munificence  of  Wolsey;  and 
Cambridge,  under  Cheke  and  Smith,  excelled  even  Ox- 
ford in  Greek  learning.  The  study  of  the  great  classics 
set  free  the  minds  of  men,  stirred  and  gave  life  to  letters, 
woke  up  English  prose  from  its  sleep,  and  kindled  the 
young  English  intelligence  in  the  universities.    Its  earliest 


Ill  FROM   CHAUCER   TO    ELIZABETH  83 

prose  was  its  best.  It  was  in  15 13  (not  printed  till  1557) 
that  Thomas  More  wrote  the  history  in  Enghsh,  of 
Edward  V.'s  life  and  Richard  III.'s  usurpation.  The 
simplicity  of  his  genius  showed  itself  in  the  style,  and 
his  wit  in  the  picturesque  method  and  the  dramatic 
dialogue  that  graced  the  book.  This  stately  historical 
manner  was  laid  aside  by  More  in  the  tracts  of  nervous 
English  with  which  he  repUed  to  Tyndale,  but  both  his 
styles  are  remarkable  for  their  purity.  Of  all  the  "  strong 
words  "  he  uses,  three  out  of  four  are  Teutonic.  More's 
most  famous  work,  the  Utopia,  15 16,  was  written  in 
Latin,  but  was  translated  afterwards,  in  1551,  by  Ralph 
Robinson.  It  tells  us  more  of  the  curiosity  the  New 
Learning  had  awakened  in  Englishmen  concerning  all 
the  problems  of  life,  society,  government,  and  religion, 
than  any  other  book  of  the  time.  It  is  the  representative 
book  of  that  short  but  well-defined  period  which  we  may 
call  English  Renaissance  before  the  Reformation.  We  see 
in  all  this  movement  another  of  the  sources  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan outburst.  Much  of  the  progress  of  prose  was  due 
to  the  patronage  of  the  young  king.  It  was  the  king  who 
asked  Lord  Berners  to  translate  Froissart,  a  translation 
which  in  1523  made  a  landmark  in  our  tongue.  It  was 
the  king  who  supported  Sir  Thomas  Elyot  in  his  effort  to 
improve  education,  and  encouraged  him  to  write  books 
(1531-46)  in  the  vulgar  tongue  that  he  might  please 
his  countrymen.  It  was  the  king  who  made  Leland, 
our  first  English  writer  on  antiquarian  subjects,  the 
"King's  Antiquary,"  1533.     It  was  the  king  to  whom 


84  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAR 

Roger  Ascham  dedicated  his  first  work,  and  who  sent 
him  abroad  to  pursue  his  studies.  This  book,  the 
Toxophilusy  or  the  School  of  Shooting,  1545,  was  writ- 
ten for  the  pleasure  of  the  yeomen  and  gentlemen  of 
England  in  their  own  tongue.  Ascham  apologises  for 
this,  and  the  apology  marks  the  state  of  English  prose. 
"Everything  has  been  done  excellently  well  in  Greek 
and  Latin,  but  in  the  English  tongue  so  meanly  that  no 
man  can  do  worse."  But  "  I  have  written  this  English 
matter,  in  the  English  tongue  for  English  men."  Ascham's 
quaint  English  has  its  charm,  and  he  did  not  know  that 
the  very  rudeness  of  language  of  which  he  complained 
was  in  reality  laying  the  foundations  of  an  English  more 
Teutonic  and  less  Latin  than  the  English  of  Chaucer. 

54.  Prose  and  the  Refcn»«ti«n.  — The  bigotry,  the 
avarice,  and  the  violent  comtroversy  of  the  Reformation 
killed  for  a  time  the  New  Learning,  but  the  Reformation 
did  a  vast  work  for  English  literature,  and  prepared  the 
language  for  the  Elizabethan  writers,  by  its  version  of 
the  Bible.  William  Tyndale's  Translation  of  the  New 
Testament,  1525,  fixed  our  standard  English  once  for  all, 
and  brought  it  finally  into  every  English  home.  Tyndale 
held  fast  to  pure  EngHsh.  In  his  two  volumes  of  polit- 
ical tracts  "  there  are  only  twelve  Teutonic  words  which 
are  now  obsolete,  a  strong  proof  of  the  influence  his 
translation  of  the  Bible  has  had  in  preserving  the  old 
speech  of  England."  Of  the  6000  words  of  the  Author- 
ised Version,  still  in  a  great  part  his  translation,  only  250 
are  not  now  in  common  use.     "  Three  out  of  four  of  his 


m  FROM    CHAUCER   TO   ELIZABETH  85 

nouns,  adverbs,  and  verbs  are  Teutonic."  And  he  spoke 
sharply  enough  to  those  who  said  our  tongue  was  so  rude 
that  the  Bible  could  not  be  translated  into  it.  "  It  is  not 
so  rude  as  they  are  false  liars.  For  the  Greek  tongue 
agreeth  more  with  the  English  than  the  Latin ;  a  thou- 
sand parts  better  may  it  be  translated  into  the  English 
than  into  the  Latin." 

Tyndale  was  helped  in  his  English  Bible  by  William 
Roy,  a  runaway  friar;  and  his  friend  Rogers,  the  first 
martyr  in  Queen  Mary's  reign,  added  the  translation  of 
the  Apocrypha,  and  made  up  what  was  wanting  in  Tyn- 
dale's  translation  from  Chronicles  to  Malachi  out  of 
Coverdale's  translation.  It  was  this  Bible  which,  re- 
vised by  Coverdale  and  edited  and  re-edited  as  Crom- 
tvelVs  Bible,  1539,  and  again  as  Cranmer's  Bible,  1540, 
was  set  up  in  every  parish  church  in  England.  It  got 
north  into  Scotland  and  made  the  Lowland  English  more 
like  the  London  English.  It  passed  over  to  the  Prot- 
estant settlements  in  Ireland.  After  its  revisal  in  16  n 
it  went  with  the  Puritan  Fathers  to  New  England  and 
fixed  the  standard  of  English  in  America.  Many  mill- 
ions of  people  now  speak  the  English  of  Tyndale's  Bible, 
and  there  is  no  book  which  has  had,  through  the  Au- 
thorised Version,  so  great  an  influence  on  the  style  of 
English  literature  and  the  standard  of  English  prose.  In 
Edward  VI. 's  reign  also  Cranmer  edited  the  English 
Prayer  Book,  1549-52.  Its  English  is  a  good  deal 
mixed  with  Latin  words,  and  its  style  is  sometimes  weak 
or  heavy,  but  on  the  whole  it  is  a  fine  example  of  stately 


86  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAf. 

prose.  It  also  steadied  our  speech.  Latimer,  on  the 
contrary,  whose  Sermon  on  the  Ploughers  and  others  were 
deUvered  in  1549  and  in  1552,  wrote  in  a  plain,  shrewd 
style,  which  by  its  humour  and  rude  directness  made  him 
the  first  preacher  of  his  day.  On  the  whole  the  Refor- 
mation fixed  and  confirmed  our  English  tongue,  but  at  the 
same  time  it  brought  in  through  theology  a  large  number 
of  Latin  words.  The  pairing  of  English  and  Latin  words 
{acknowledge  and  confess,  etc.)  in  the  Prayer  Book  is 
a  good  example  of  both  these  results. 

55.  Poetry  in  the  Sixteenth  Century  under  the  In- 
fluence of  Chaucer.  —  One  source,  we  have  said,  of  the 
Elizabethan  literature,  before  Elizabeth,  was  the  recovery, 
through  Caxton's  press,  of  Chaucer  and  his  men.  It  is 
probable  that  the  influence  of  Itahan  literature  on  English 
poets  was  now  kept  from  becoming  overwhelming  by  the 
strong  English  element  in  Chaucer.  At  least  this  was 
one  of  the  reasons  for  the  clear  poetic  individuality  of 
England ;  and  we  can  easily  trace  its  balancing  effect 
in  Spenser.  It  was  of  importance,  then,  that  before 
Surrey  and  Wyatt  again  brought  Italian  elements  into 
English  verse,  there  should  be  a  revival  of  Chaucer, 
both  in  England  and  Scotland.  This  transition  period, 
short  as  it  was,  is  of  interest.  Stephen  Hawes,  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  VII.,  represented  the  transition  by  an 
imitation  of  the  old  work.  Amid  many  poems,  some 
more  imitative  of  Lydgate  than  of  Chaucer,  his  long  alle- 
•gorical  poem,  entitled  the  Pastime  of  Pleasure,  is  the 
best.     In  fact,  it  is  the  first,  since   the   middle  of  the 


ra  FROM    CHAUCER   TO   ELIZABETH  Sy 

fifteenth  century,  in  which  Imagination  again  began  to 
plume  her  wings  and  soar.  Within  the  realm  of  art,  it 
corresponded  to  that  effort  to  resuscitate  the  dead  body 
of  the  Old  Chivalry  which  Henry  VIII.  and  Francis  I. 
attempted.  It  goes  back  for  its  inspiration  to  the  J^o- 
mance  of  the  Rose,  and  is  an  allegory  of  the  right  educa- 
tion of  a  knight,  showing  how  Grand  Amour  won  at  last 
La  Bel  Pucell.  But,  Uke  all  soulless  resurrections,  it 
died  quickly. 

On  the  other  hand,  John  Skelton  represents  the 
transition  by  at  first  following  the  old  poetry,  and  then, 
pressed  upon  by  the  storm  of  human  life  in  the  present, 
by  taking  an  original  path.  His  imitative  poetry  belongs 
mostly  to  Henry  VII. 's  time,  but  when  the  religious  and 
political  disturbances  began  in  Henry  VIII. 's  time, 
Skelton  became  excited  by  the  cry  of  the  people  for 
Church  reformation.  His  poem.  Why  come  ye  not  to 
Court?  was  a  fierce  satire  on  the  great  Cardinal.  That 
of  Colm  Clout  was  the  cry  of  the  country  Colin,  and  of 
the  Clout  or  mechanic  of  the  town  against  the  corruption 
of  the  Church ;  and  it  represents  the  whole  popular  feel- 
ing of  the  time  just  before  the  movement  of  the  Reforma- 
tion took  a  new  turn  from  the  opposition  of  the  Pope  to 
Henry's  divorce.  Both  are  written  in  short  "  rude  rayling 
rimes,  pleasing  only  the  popular  ear,"  and  Skelton  chose 
them  for  that  purpose.  He  had  a  rough,  impetuous 
power,  but  Skelton  could  use  any  language  he  pleased. 
He  was  an  admirable  scholar.  Erasmus  calls  him  the 
"  glory  and  light  of  English  letters,"   and  Caxton  says 


SB  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHA>. 

that  he  improved  our  language.  His  poem,  the  Bowge  of 
Court  (rewards  of  court),  is  full  of  powerful  satire  against 
the  corruption  of  the  times,  and  of  vivid  impersonations 
of  the  virtues  and  vices.  But  he  was  not  only  the  satirist. 
The  pretty  and  new  love  lyrics  that  we  owe  to  him  fore- 
shadow the  Elizabethan  imagination  and  life ;  and  the 
JBoke  of  Phyllyp  Sparowe,  which  tells,  in  imitation  of 
Catullus,  the  grief  of  a  nun  called  Jane  Scrope  for  the 
death  of  her  sparrow,  is  a  gay  and  inventive  poem. 
Skelton  stands  —  a  landmark  in  English  literature  —  be- 
tween the  mere  imitation  of  Chaucer  and  the  rise  of  a  new 
Italian  influence  in  England  in  the  poems  of  Surrey  and 
Wyatt.  In  his  own  special  work  he  was  entirely  original. 
The  Ship  of  Fooles,  1508,  by  Barclay,  is  of  this  time, 
but  it  has  no  value.  It  is  a  paraphrase  of  a  famous 
German  work  by  Sebastian  Brandt,  published  at  Basel. 
It  was  popular  because  it  attacked  the  follies  and  ques- 
tions of  the  time.  Its  sole  interest  to  us  is  in  its  pictures 
of  familiar  manners  and  popular  customs.  But  Barclay 
did  other  work,  and  he  established  the  eclogue  in  Eng- 
land. With  him  the  transition  time  is  over,  and  the 
curtain  is  ready  to  rise  on  the  Elizabethan  age  of  poetry. 
While  we  wait,  we  will  make  an  interlude  out  of  the  work 
of  the  poets  of  Scotland. 

SCOTTISH  POETRY 

56.  Scottish  Poetry  is  poetry  written  in  the  English 
tongue  by  men  living  in  Scotland.  These  men,  though 
calling  themselves  Scotsmen,  are  of  good  EngUsh  blood. 


in  FROM    CHAUCER   TO    ELIZABETH  89 

But  the  blood,  as  I  think,  was  mixed  with  a  larger  infu- 
sion of  Celtic  blood  than  elsewhere. 

Old  Northumbria  extended  from  the  Humber  to  the 
Firth  of  Forth,  leaving  however  on  its  western  border  a 
strip  of  unconquered  land,  which  took  in  Lancashire, 
Cumberland,  and  Westmoreland  in  our  England,  and, 
over  the  border,  most  of  the  western  country  between 
the  Clyde  and  Solway  Firth.  This  unconquered  country 
was  the  Welsh  kingdom  of  Strathclyde,  and  was  dwelt  in 
by  the  Celtic  race.  The  present  EngUsh  part  of  it  was 
conquered  and  the  Celts  absorbed.  But  in  the  part  to 
the  north  of  the  Solway  Firth  the  Celts  were  not  con- 
quered and  not  absorbed.  They  remained,  lived  with 
the  Englishmen  who  were  settled  over  the  old  Nor- 
thumbria, intermarried  with  them,  and  became  under  Scot 
kings  a  people  with  the  Celtic  elements  more  dominant 
in  them  than  in  the  rest  of  our  nation.  English  htera- 
ture  in  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland  would  then  retain  more 
of  these  Celtic  elements  than  elsewhere ;  and  there  are 
certain  peculiarities  infused  through  the  whole  of  English 
poetry  in  Scotland  which  are  especially  Celtic. 

5  7.  Celtic  Elements  of  Scottish  Poetry.  —  The  first 
of  these  is  the  love  of  wild  nature  for  its  own  sake. 
There  is  a  passionate,  close,  and  poetical  observation  and 
description  of  natural  scenery  in  Scotland  from  the 
earliest  times  of  its  poetry,  such  as  we  do  not  possess  in 
English  poetry  till  the  time  of  Thomson.  The  second  is 
the  love  of  colour.  All  early  Scottish  poetry  differs  from 
English  in  the  extraordinary  way  in  which  colour  is  in- 


90  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

sisted  on,  and  at  times  in  the  lavish  exaggeration  of  it 
The  third  is  the  wittier  and  coarser  humour  in  the  Scot- 
tish poetry,  which  is  distinctly  Celtic  in  contrast  with 
that  humour  which  has  its  root  in  sadness  and  which  be- 
longs to  the  Teutonic  races.  Few  things  are  really  more 
different  than  the  humour  of  Chaucer  and  the  humour  of 
Dunbar,  than  the  humour  of  Cowper  and  the  humour  of 
Bums.  These  are  the  special  Celtic  elements  in  the 
Lowland  poetry, 

58.  But  there  are  also  national  elements  in  it  which, 
exaggerated  and  isolated  as  they  were,  are  also  Celtic. 
The  wild  individuality  of  the  Gaelic  clans  was  not  un- 
represented in  the  Lowland  kingdom,  and  became  there 
as  assertive  a  nationality  as  Ireland  has  ever  proclaimed. 
The  English  were  as  national  as  the  Scots,  but  they  were 
not  oppressed.  But  for  nearly  forty  years  the  Scots  re- 
sisted for  their  very  life  the  efforts  of  England  to  conquer 
them.  And  the  war  of  freedom  left  its  traces  on  their 
poetry  from  Barboui  to  Bums  and  Walter  Scott  in  the 
almost  obtrusive  way  in  which  Scotland,  and  Scottish 
liberty,  and  Scottish  heroes  are  thrust  forward  in  their 
verse.  Their  passionate  nationality  appears  in  another 
form  in  their  descriptive  poetry.  The  natural  descrip- 
tion of  Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  or  even  Milton,  is  not 
distinctively  English.  But  in  Scotland  it  is  always  the 
scenery  of  their  own  land  that  the  poets  describe.  Even 
when  they  are  imitating  Chaucer  they  do  not  imitate  his 
conventional  landscape.  They  put  in  a  Scottish  land- 
scape ;  and  in  the  work  of  such  men  as  Gawin  Douglas 


in  FROM    CHAUCER   TO   ELIZABETH  9I 

the  love  of  Scotland  and  the  love  of  nature  mingle  their 
influences  together  to  make  him  sit  down,  as  it  were,  to 
paint,  with  his  eye  on  everything  he  paints,  a  series  of 
Scottish  landscapes. 

59.  The  first  of  the  Scottish  poets,  omitting  Thomas 
of  Erceldoune,  is  John  Barbour,  Archdeacon  of  Aber- 
deen. His  long  poem  of  The  Bruce,  1375-7,  represents 
the  whole  of  the  eager  struggle  for  Scottish  freedom 
against  the  English  which  closed  at  Bannockburn ;  and 
the  national  spirit,  which  I  have  mentioned,  springs  in  it, 
full  grown,  into  life.  But  it  is  temperate,  it  does  not 
pass  into  the  fury  against  England,  which  is  so  plain  in 
writers  like  Blind  Harry,  who,  about  1461,  composed  a 
long  poem  in  the  heroic  couplet  of  Chaucer  on  the  deeds 
of  William  Wallace.  In  Henry  V.'s  reign,  Andrew  of 
WvNTOUN  wrote  his  Oryginale  Cronykil  of  Scotland,  one 
of  the  rhyming  chronicles  of  the  time.  It  is  only  in  the 
next  poet  that  we  find  the  full  influence  of  Chaucer, 
and  it  is  thereafter  continuous  till  the  Elizabethan  time. 
James  the  First  of  Scotland  was  prisoner  in  England 
for  nineteen  years,  till  1422.  There  he  read  Chaucer, 
and  fell  in  love  with  Lady  Jane  Beaufort,  niece  of 
Henry  IV.  The  poem  which  he  wrote  —  The  King's 
Quair  (the  quire  or  book)  —  is  done  in  imitation  of 
Chaucer,  and  in  Chaucer's  seven-lined  stanza,  which 
from  James's  use  of  it  is  called  "  Rime  Royal."  In  six 
cantos,  sweeter,  tenderer,  and  purer  than  any  verse  till 
we  come  to  Spenser,  he  describes  the  beginning  of  his 
love  and  its  happy  end.     "  I  must  write,"  he  says,  "  so 


92  ENGLISH   LITERATUR3  CHAP 

much  because  I  have  come  so  jfrom  Hell  to  Heaven/ 
Though  imitative  of  Chaucer,  his  work  has  an  original 
clement  in  it.  The  natural  description  is  more  varied, 
the  colour  is  more  vivid,  and  there  is  a  modem  self- 
reflective  quality,  a  touch  of  mystic  feeling  which  does 
not  belong  to  Chaucer. 

Robert  Henrvson,  who  died  about  1500,  a  school- 
master in  Dunfermline,  was  also  an  imitator  of  Chaucer, 
and  his  Testament  of  Cresseid  continues  Chaucer's 
Troilus.  But  he  did  not  do  only  imitative  work.  He 
treated  the  fables  of  -^sop  in  a  new  fashion.  In  his 
hands  they  are  long  stories,  full  of  pleasant  dialogue, 
political  allusions,  and  with  elaborate  morals  attached  to 
them.  They  have  a  peculiar  Scottish  tang,  and  are  full 
of  descriptions  of  Scottish  scenery.  He  also  reanimated 
the  short  pastoral  in  his  Robin  and  Makyne.  It  is  a 
natural,  prettily-turned  dialogue;  and  a  flashing  Celtic 
wit,  such  as  charms  us  in  Duncan  Gray,  runs  through  it. 
The  individuality  which  reformed  two  modes  of  poetic 
work  in  these  poems  appears  again  in  his  sketch  of  the 
graces  of  womanhood  in  the  Garment  of  Good  Ladies ; 
a  poem  of  the  same  type  as  those  thoughtful  lyrics  which 
describe  what  is  best  in  certain  phases  of  professions,  or 
of  life,  such  as  Sir  H.  Wotton's  Character  of  a  Happy 
Life,  or  Wordsworth's  Happy  Warrior. 

But  among  many  poets  whom  we  need  not  mention, 
the  greatest  is  William  Dunbar.  He  carries  the  in- 
fluence of  Chaucer  on  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century 
and  into  the  sixteenth.     His  genius,  though  masculine, 


m  FROM    CHAUCER   TO   ELIZABETH  93 

loved  beauty,  and  his  work  was  as  varied  in  its  range  as 
it  was  original.  He  followed  the  form  and  plan  of  Chau- 
cer in  his  two  poems  of  T%e  Thistle  and  the  Rose,  1503, 
and  the  Golden  Terge,  1508,  the  first  on  the  marriage  of 
James  IV.  to  Margaret  Tudor,  the  second  an  allegory  of 
Love,  Beauty,  Reason,  and  the  poet.  In  both,  though 
they  begin  with  Chaucer*s  conventional  May  morning, 
the  natural  description  becomes  Scottish,  and  in  both  the 
national  enthusiasm  of  the  poet  is  strongly  marked.  But 
he  soon  ceased  to  imitate.  The  vigorous  fun  of  the 
satires  and  of  the  satirical  ballads  that  he  wrote  is  only 
matched  by  their  coarseness,  a  coarseness  and  a  fun  that 
descended  to  Burns.  Perhaps  Dunbar's  genius  is  still 
higher  in  a  wild  poem  in  which  he  personifies  the  seven 
deadly  sins,  and  describes  their  dance,  with  a  mixture  of 
horror  and  humour  which  makes  the  little  thing  unique. 

A  man  as  remarkable  as  Dunbar  is  Gawin  Douglas, 
Bishop  of  Dunkeld,  who  died  in  1522,  at  the  Court  of 
Henry  VIII.,  and  was  buried  in  the  Savoy.  He  trans- 
lated into  verse  Ovid's  Art  of  Love,  now  lost,  and  after- 
wards, with  truth  and  spirit,  the  ^neids  of  Virgil,  15 13. 
To  each  book  of  the  ^neid  he  wrote  a  prologue  of  his 
own.  Three  of  them  are  descriptions  of  the  country  in 
May,  in  Autumn,  and  in  Winter.  The  scenery  is  alto- 
gether Scottish,  and  the  few  Chaucerisms  that  appear 
seem  absurdly  out  of  place  in  a  picture  of  nature  which 
is  painted  with  excessive  care  and  directly  from  the  truth. 
The  colour  is  superb,  but  the  landscape  is  not  composed 
by  any  art  into  a  whole.     There  is   nothing   like  it  in 


94  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

England  till  Thomson's  Seasons,  and  Thomson  was  a 
Scotsman.  Only  the  Celtic  love  of  nature  can  account 
for  the  vast  distance  between  work  like  this  and  contem- 
porary work  in  England  such  as  Skelton's.  Of  Douglas's 
other  original  work,  one  poem,  the  Palace  of  Honour^ 
1501,  continues  the  influence  of  Chaucer. 

There  were  a  number  of  other  Scottish  poets  who  are 
all  remembered  by  Dunbar  in  his  Lament  for  the  Makars, 
and  praised  by  Sir  David  Lyndsay,  whom  it  is  best  to 
mention  in  this  place,  because  he  still  connects  Scottish 
poetry  with  Chaucer.  He  was  born  about  1490,  and  was 
the  last  of  the  old  Scottish  school,  and  the  most  popular. 
He  is  the  most  popular  because  he  is  not  only  the  poet, 
but  also  the  reformer.  His  poem  the  Dreme,  1528,  links 
him  back  to  Chaucer.  It  is  in  the  manner  of  the  old 
poet.  But  its  scenery  is  Scottish,  and  instead  of  the  May 
morning  of  Chaucer,  it  opens  on  a  winter's  day  of  wind 
and  sleet.  The  place  is  a  cave  over  the  sea,  whence 
Lyndsay  sees  the  weltering  of  the  ocean.  Chaucer  goes 
to  sleep  over  Ovid  or  Cicero,  Lyndsay  falls  into  a  dream 
as  he  thinks  of  the  "false  world's  instability,"  wavering 
like  the  sea  waves.  The  difference  marks  not  only  the 
difference  of  the  two  countries,  but  the  different  natures 
of  the  men.  Chaucer  did  not  care  much  for  the  popular 
storms,  and  loved  the  Court  more  than  the  Commonweal. 
Lyndsay  in  the  Dreme  and  in  two  other  poems  —  the 
Complaint  to  the  King,  and  the  Testament  of  the  King's 
Papyngo  —  is  absorbed  in  the  evils  and  sorrows  of  the 
people,  in  the  desire  to  reform  the  abuses  of  the  Church, 


ni  FROM    CHAUCER   TO    ELIZABETH  95 

of  the  Court,  of  party,  of  the  nobility.  In  1539  his 
Satire  of  the  Three  Estates,  a  Morality  interspersed  with 
interludes,  was  represented  before  James  V.  at  LinUth- 
gow.  It  was  a  daring  attack  on  the  ignorance,  profli- 
gacy, and  exactions  of  the  priesthood,  on  the  vices  and 
flattery  of  the  favourites  —  "a  mocking  of  abuses  used  in 
the  country  by  diverse  sorts  of  estates."  A  still  bolder 
poem,  and  one  thought  so  even  by  himself,  is  the  Mon- 
archic, 1553,  his  last  work.  He  is  as  much  the  reformer, 
as  he  is  the  poet,  of  a  transition  time.  Still  his  verse 
hath  charms,  but  it  was  neither  sweet  nor  imaginative. 
He  had  genuine  satire,  great  moral  breadth,  much 
preaching  power  in  verse,  coarse,  broad  humour  in 
plenty,  and  more  dramatic  power  and  invention  than 
the  rest  of  his  fellows. 

60.  The  Elizabethan  Dawn :  Wyatt  and  Surrey.  — 
While  poetry  under  Skelton  and  Lyndsay  became  an 
instrument  of  reform,  it  revived  as  an  art  at  the  close  of 
Henry  VIII.'s  reign  in  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  and  Lord 
Henry  Howard,  Earl  of  Surrey.  They  were  both  Italian 
travellers,  and  in  bringing  back  to  England  the  inspi- 
ration they  had  gained  from  Italian  and  classic  models 
they  re-made  English  poetry.  They  are  our  first  really 
modern  poets ;  the  first  who  have  anything  of  the  modem 
manner.  Though  ItaHan  in  sentiment,  their  language  is 
more  EngHsh  than  Chaucer's,  that  is,  they  use  fewer 
romance  words.  They  handed  down  this  purity  of 
English  to  the  Ehzabethan  poets,  to  Sackville,  Spenser, 


gS  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAR 

and  Shakespeare.  They  introduced  a  new  kind  of  poetry, 
the  amourist  poetry  —  a  poetry  extremely  personal,  and 
personal  as  English  poetry  had  scarcely  ever  been  before. 
The  amourists,  as  they  are  called,  were  poets  who  com- 
posed a  series  of  poems  on  the  subject  of  the  joys  and 
sorrows  of  their  loves  —  sonnets  mingled  with  lyrical 
pieces  after  the  manner  of  Petrarca,  and  sometimes  in 
accord  with  the  love  philosophy  he  built  on  Plato.  They 
began  with  Wyatt  and  Surrey.  They  did  not  die  out  till 
the  end  of  James  I.'s  reign.  The  subjects  of  Wyatt  and 
Surrey  were  chiefly  lyrical,  and  the  fact  that  they  irnitated 
the  same  model  has  made  some  likeness  between  them. 
Like  their  personal  characters,  however,  the  poetry  of 
Wyatt  is  the  more  thoughtful  and  the  more  strongly  felt, 
but  Surrey's  has  a  sweeter  movement  and  a  liveUer  fancy. 
Both  did  this  great  thing  for  English  verse  —  they  chose 
an  exquisite  model,  and  in  imitating  it  "corrected  the 
ruggedness  of  English  poetry."  A  new  standard  was 
made  below  which  the  future  poets  should  not  fall.  They 
also  added  new  stanza  measures  to  English  verse,  and 
enlarged  in  this  way  the  "lyrical  range."  Surrey  was 
the  first,  in  his  translation  of  the  Second  and  Fourth 
Books  of  Virgirs  ^neid,  to  use  the  ten-syllabled,  un- 
rhymed  verse,  which  we  now  call  blank  verse.  In  his 
hands  it  is  not  worthy  of  praise.  Sackville,  Lord  Buck- 
hurst,  introduced  it  into  drama ;  Marlowe  made  it  the 
proper  verse  of  the  drama.  In  plays  it  has  a  special 
manner  of  its  own ;  in  poetry  proper  it  was,  we  may  say, 
not  only  created  but  perfected  by  Milton, 


m  FROM   CHAUCER  TO  ELIZABETH  97 

The  new  impulse  thus  given  to  poetry  was  all  but 
arrested  by  the  bigotry  that  prevailed  during  the  reigns 
of  Edward  VI.  and  Mary,  and  all  the  work  of  the  New 
Learning  seemed  to  be  useless.  But  Thomas  Wilson's 
book  in  English  on  Rhetoric  and  Logic  in  1553,  and  the 
publication  of  Thomas  Tusser's  Pointes  of  Hiisbandrie  and 
of  Tottel's  Miscellany  of  Uncertain  Authors,  1557,  in  the 
last  year  of  Mary's  reign,  proved  that  something  was 
stirring  beneath  the  gloom.  The  Miscellany  contained 
40  poems  by  Surrey,  96  by  Wyatt,  40  by  Grimoald,  and 
134  by  uncertain  authors.  The  date  should  be  remem- 
bered, for  it  is  the  first  printed  book  of  modem  English 
poetry.  It  proves  that  men  cared  now  more  for  the  new 
than  the  old  poets,  that  the  time  of  mere  imitation  of 
Chaucer  was  over,  and  that  of  original  creation  begun. 
It  ushers  in  the  Elizabethan  literature. 

H 


98  ENGLISH    LITERATURE 


CHAPTER  rV 

THE  ELIZABETHAN  LITERATURE 

6i.  Elizabethan  Literature,  as  a  literature,  may  be 
said  to  begin  with  Surrey  and  Wyatt.  But  as  their 
poems  were  pubhshed  shortly  before  Elizabeth  came  to 
the  throne,  we  date  the  beginning  of  the  early  period  oi 
Ehzabethan  literature  from  the  year  of  her  accession, 

1558.  That  period  lasted  till  1579,  and  was  followed  by 
the  great  Uterary  outburst  of  the  days  of  Spenser  and 
Shakespeare.  The  apparent  suddenness  of  this  outburst 
has  been  an  object  of  wonder.  I  have  already  noticed 
its  earliest  sources  in  the  last  hundred  years.  And  now 
we  shall  best  seek  its  nearest  causes  in  the  work  done 
during  the  early  years  of  Elizabeth.  The  flood-tide  which 
began  in  1579  was  preceded  by  a  very  various,  plentiful, 
but  inferior  literature,  in  which  new  forms  of  poetry  and 
prose-writing  were  tried,  and  new  veins  of  thought  opened. 
These  twenty  years  from  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates, 

1559,  to  the  Shepheard's  Calendar,  1579,  sowed  seeds 
which  when  the  time  came  broke  into  flower.  We  wonder 
at  the  flower,  but  it  grew  naturally  through  seed  and  stem, 
leaves  and  blossom.    They  made  the  flower,  since  the 


IV  THE   ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  99 

circumstances  were  favourable.  And  never  in  England, 
save  in  our  own  century,  were  they  so  favourable. 

62.  First  Elizabethan  Period,  1 558-1 570.  —  (i.)  The 
literary  prose  of  the  beginning  of  this  time  is  represented 
by  the  Scholemaster  of  Ascham,  published  in  1570.  This 
book,  which  is  on  education,  is  the  work  of  the  scholar  of 
the  New  Learning  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  who  has 
lived  on  into  another  period.  It  is  not,  properly  speak- 
ing, Elizabethan ;  it  is  like  a  stranger  in  a  new  land  and 
among  new  manners. 

(2.)  Poetry  is  first  represented  by  Sackville,  Lord 
Buckhurst.  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  for  which  he 
wrote,  1563,  the  Induction  and  one  tale,  is  a  series  of 
tragic  poems  on  the  model  of  Boccaccio's  Falls  of  Princes, 
already  imitated  by  Lydgate.  Seven  poets  at  least,  with 
Sackville,  contributed  tales  to  it,  but  his  poem  is  poetry 
of  so  fine  a  quality  that  it  stands  absolutely  alone  during 
these  twenty  years.  The  Induction  paints  the  poet's 
descent  into  Avemus,  and  his  meeting  with  Henry 
Stafford,  Duke  of  Buckingham,  whose  fate  he  tells  with 
a  grave  and  inventive  imagination,  and  with  the  first  true 
music  which  we  hear  since  Chaucer.  Being  written  in 
the  manner  and  stanza  of  the  elder  poets,  this  poem  has 
been  called  the  transition  between  Lydgate  and  Spenser. 
But  it  does  not  truly  belong  to  the  old  time ;  it  is  as 
modern  as  Spenser,  and  its  allegorical  representations 
are  in  the  same  manner  as  those  of  Spenser.  George 
Gascoigne,  whose  satire,  the  Steele  Glas,  1576,  is  our 
first  long  satirical    poem,   deserves  mention  among  a 


lOO  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

crowd  of  poets  who  came  after  Sackville.  They  wrote 
legends,  pieces  on  the  wars  and  discoveries  of  the 
EngUshmen  of  their  day,  epitaphs,  epigrams,  songs,  son- 
nets, elegies,  fables,  and  sets  of  love  poems ;  and  the  best 
things  they  did  were  collected  in  such  miscellaneous 
collections  as  Xht  Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices,  lo.  1576. 
This  book,  with  Tottel's,  set  on  foot  both  now  and  in  the 
later  years  of  Ehzabeth  a  crowd  of  other  miscellanies  of 
poetry  which  represent  the  vast  number  of  experiments 
made  in  Elizabeth's  time,  in  the  subjects,  the  metres, 
and  the  various  kinds  of  lyrical  poetry.  At  present,  all 
we  can  say  is  that  lyrical  poetry,  and  that  which  we  may 
call  "  occasional  poetry,"  were  now  in  full  motion.  The 
popular  Ballads  also  took  a  wide  range.  The  registers 
of  the  Stationers'  Company  prove  that  there  was  scarcely 
any  event  of  the  day,  nor  almost  any  controversy  in  lit- 
erature, politics,  religion,  which  was  not  the  subject  of 
verse,  and  of  verse  into  which  imagination  strove  to  enter. 
The  ballad  may  be  said  to  have  done  the  work  of  the 
modem  weekly  review.  It  stimulated  and  informed  the 
popular  intellectual  life  of  England. 

(3.)  Frequent  translations  were  now  made  from  the 
classical  writers.  We  know  the  names  of  more  than 
twelve  men  who  did  this  work,  and  there  must  have  been 
many  more.  Already  in  Henry  VIII.'s  and  Edward  VI.'s 
time,  ancient  authors  had  been  made  English ;  and  now 
before  1579,  Virgil,  Ovid,  Cicero,  Demosthenes,  Plu- 
tarch, and  many  Greek  and  Latin  plays,  were  translated. 
Among  the  rest,  Phaer's  Virgil,  1562,  Arthur  Golding's 


IV  THE   ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  lOI 

Ovid's  Metamorphoses,  1567,  and  George  Turbervile's 
Historical  Epistles  of  Ovid,  1567,  are,  and  especially  the 
first,  remarkable.  The  English  people  in  this  way  were 
brought  into  contact,  more  than  before,  with  the  classical 
spirit,  and  again  it  had  its  awakening  power.  We  cannot 
say  that  either  the  fineness  or  compactness  of  classic 
work  appeared  in  these  heterogeneous  translations, 
though  one  curious  result  of  them  was  the  craze  which 
followed,  and  which  Gabriel  Harvey  strove,  fortunately 
in  vain,  to  impose  on  Spenser,  for  reproducing  classical 
metres  in  English  poetry.  Nor  were  the  old  EngUsh 
poets  neglected.  Though  Chaucer  and  Lydgate,  Lang- 
land,  and  the  rest,  were  no  longer  imitated  in  this  time 
when  fresh  creation  had  begun,  they  were  studied,  and 
they  added  their  impulse  of  life  to  original  poets  like 
Spenser. 

(4.)  Theological  Reform  stirred  men  to  another  kind 
of  literary  work.  A  great  number  of  polemical  ballads, 
pamphlets,  and  plays  issued  every  year  from  obscure 
presses  and  filled  the  land.  Poets  like  George  Gas- 
coigne  and  still  more  Bamaby  Googe,  represent  in  their 
work  the  hatred  the  young  men  had  of  the  old  religious 
system.  It  was  a  spirit  which  did  not  do  much  for 
literature,  but  it  quickened  the  habit  of  composition, 
and  made  it  easier.  The  Bible  also  became  common 
property,  and  its  language  glided  into  all  theological 
writing  and  gave  it  a  literary  tone;  while  the  pubHca- 
tion  of  John  Foxe's  Acts  and  Monuments  or  Book  of 
Martyrs^  1563,  gave  to  the  people  all  over  England  a 


I02  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

book  which,  by  its  simple  style,  the  ease  of  its  story- 
telling, and  its  popular  charm  made  the  very  peasants 
who  heard  it  read  feel  what  is  meant  by  literature. 

(5.)  The  history  of  the  country  and  its  manners  was 
not  neglected.  A  whole  class  of  antiquarians  wrote 
steadily,  if  with  some  dulness,  on  this  subject.  Grafton, 
Stow,  Holinshed,  and  others,  at  least  supplied  materials 
for  the  study  and  use  of  historical  dramatists. 

(6.)  Iht  love  of  stories  gxe.^  quickly.  The  old  Eng- 
lish tales  and  ballads  were  eagerly  read  and  collected. 
Italian  tales  by  various  authors  were  translated  and 
sown  so  broadcast  over  London  by  William  Painter  in 
his  collection,  The  Palace  of  Pleasure,  1566,  by  George 
Turbervile,  in  his  Tragical  Tales  in  verse,  and  by 
others,  that  it  is  said  they  were  to  be  bought  at  every 
bookstall.  The  Romances  of  Spain  and  Italy  poured 
in,  and  Amadis  de  Gaul,  and  the  companion  romances 
the  Arcadia  of  Sannazaro  and  the  Ethiopian  History, 
were  sources  of  books  Uke  Sidney's  Arcadia,  and,  with 
the  classics,  supplied  materials  for  the  pageants.  A 
great  number  of  subjects  for  prose  and  poetry  were 
thus  made  ready  for  literary  men,  and  prose  fiction 
became  possible  in  English  literature. 

(7.)  All  over  Europe,  and  especially  in  Italy,  now 
closely  linked  to  England,  the  Renaissance  had  pro- 
duced a  wild  spirit  of  exhausting  all  the  possibilities 
of  human  life.  Every  form,  every  game  of  life,  was 
tried,  every  fancy  of  goodness  or  wickedness  followed 
for  the  fancy's  sake.     Men  said  to  themselves  "  Attempt, 


IV  THE   ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  IO3 

Attempt."  The  act  accompanied  the  thought.  Eng- 
land at  last  shared  in  this  passion,  but  in  EngUsh  hfe 
it  was  directed.  There  was  a  great  liberty  given  to 
men  to  live  and  do  as  they  pleased,  provided  the 
queen  was  worshipped  and  there  was  no  conspiracy 
against  the  State.  That  much  direction  did  not  apply 
to  purely  literary  production.  Its  attemptings  were 
unlimited.  Anything,  everything  was  tried,  especially 
in  the  drama. 

(8.)  The  masques,  pageants,  interludes,  and  plays  that 
were  written  at  this  time  are  scarcely  to  be  counted. 
At  every  great  ceremonial,  whenever  the  queen  made 
a  progress  or  visited  one  of  the  great  lords  or  a  uni- 
versity, at  the  houses  of  the  nobility,  and  at  the  Court 
on  all  important  days,  some  obscure  versifier,  or  a 
young  scholar  at  the  Inns  of  Court,  at  Oxford  or  at 
Cambridge,  produced  a  masque  or  a  pageant,  or  wrote 
or  translated  a  play.  The  habit  of  play- writing  became 
common ;  a  kind  of  school,  one  might  almost  say  a 
manufacture  of  plays,  arose,  which  partly  accounts  for 
the  rapid  production,  the  excellence,  and  the  multitude 
of  plays  that  we  find  after  1576.  Represented  all  over 
England,  these  masques,  pageants,  and  dramas  were 
seen  by  the  people,  who  were  thus  accustomed  to  take 
an  interest,  though  of  an  uneducated  kind,  in  the  larger 
drama  that  was  to  follow.  The  literary  men  on  the 
other  hand  ransacked,  in  order  to  find  subjects  and 
scenes  for  their  pageants,  ancient  and  mediaeval,  magi- 
cal, and  modern  literature,  and  many  of  them  in  doing 


104  6NGLISH    LITERAtURK  CttA*. 

SO  became  not  fine  but  multifarious  scholars.  The 
imagination  of  England  was  quickened  and  educated 
in  this  way,  and  as  Biblical  stories  were  well  known 
and  largely  used,  the  images  of  oriental  life  were  kept 
among  the  materials  of  dramatic  imagination. 

(9.)  Another  influence  bore  on  literature.  It  was 
that  given  by  the  stories  of  the  voyagers,  who,  in  the 
new  commercial  activity  of  the  country,  penetrated  into 
remote  lands,  and  saw  the  strange  monsters  and  savages 
which  the  poets  now  added  to  the  fairies,  dwarfs,  and 
giants  of  the  Romances.  Before  1579,  books  had  been 
pubHshed  on  the  north-west  passage.  Frobisher  had 
made  his  voyages,  and  Drake  had  started,  to  return  in 
1580,  to  amaze  all  England  with  the  story  of  his  sail 
round  the  world  and  of  the  riches  of  the  Spanish  Main. 
We  may  trace  everywhere  in  Elizabethan  literature  the 
impression  made  by  the  wonders  told  by  the  sailors  and 
captains  who  explored  and  fought  from  the  North  Pole 
to  the  Southern  Seas. 

(10.)  Then  there  was  the  freest  possible  play  of  lit- 
erary criticism.  Every  wine-shop  in  London,  every 
room  at  the  university,  was  filled  with  the  talk  of  young 
men  on  any  work  which  was  published  and  on  the  manu- 
scripts which  were  read.  Out  of  this  host  emerged  the 
men  of  genius.  Moreover,  far  apart  from  these,  there 
were  in  England  now,  among  all  the  noise  and  stir,  quiet 
scholars,  such  as  Contarini  and  Pole  had  been  in  Italy, 
followers  of  Erasmus  and  Colet,  precursors  of  Bacon, 
who  kept  the  lamp  of  scholarship  burning,  and  who, 


«r  THE    ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  IO5 

when  literature  became  beautiful,  nurtured  and  praised 
it.  Nor  were  the  young  nobles,  who  like  Surrey  had 
been  in  Italy  and  had  known  what  was  good,  less  useful 
now.  There  were  many  men  who,  when  Shakespeare 
and  Spenser  came,  were  able  to  say  —  "This  is  good," 
and  who  drew  the  new  genius  into  Hght. 

(11.)  Lastly,  we  have  proof  that  there  was  a  large 
number  of  persons  writing  who  did  not  publish  their 
works.  It  was  considered  at  this  time,  that  to  write  for 
the  public  injured  a  man,  and  unless  he  were  driven  by 
poverty  he  kept  his  manuscript  by  him.  But  things 
were  changed  when  a  great  genius  like  Spenser  took  the 
world  by  storm ;  when  Lyly's  Euphues  enchanted  court 
society;  when  a  fine  gentleman  like  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
was  known  to  be  a  writer.  Literature  was  made  the 
fashion,  and  the  disgrace  being  taken  from  it,  the  pro- 
duction became  enormous.  Manuscripts  written  and 
laid  by  were  at  once  sent  forth;  and  when  the  rush 
began  it  grew  by  its  own  force.  Those  who  had  previ- 
ously been  kept  from  writing  by  its  unpopularity  now 
took  it  up  eagerly,  and  those  who  had  written  before 
wrote  twice  as  much  now.  The  great  improvement  also 
in  literary  quality  is  also  accounted  for  by  this  —  that 
men  strove  to  equal  such  work  as  Sidney's  or  Spenser's, 
and  that  a  wider  and  more  exacting  criticism  arose. 
Nor  must  one  omit  to  say,  that  owing  to  this  employ- 
ment of  life  on  so  vast  a  number  of  subjects,  and  to  the 
voyages,  and  to  the  new  hteratures  searched  into,  and  to 
the  heat  of  theological  strife,  a  multitude  of  new  words 


I06  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP, 

Streamed  into  the  language,  and  enriched  the  vocabulary 
of  imagination.     Shakespeare  uses  15,000  words. 

63.  The  Later  Literature  of  Elizabeth's  Reign,  1579- 
1602,  begins  with  the  publication  of  Lyly's  Euphues, 
1579,  and  Spenser's  Shepheards  Calendar,  also  in  1579, 
and  with  the  writing  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia  and 
his  Apology  for  Foe  trie,  15  80-1.  It  will  be  best  to 
leave  the  poem  of  Spenser  aside  till  we  come  to  write 
of  the  poets. 

The  Euphues  was  the  work  of  John  Lyly,  poet  and 
dramatist.  It  is  in  two  parts,  Euphues  the  Anatomie  of 
Wit,  and  Euphues  and  his  England.  In  six  years  it  ran 
through  five  editions,  so  great  was  its  popularity.  Its 
prose  style  is  odd  to  an  excess,  "  precious  "  and  sweet- 
ened, but  it  has  care  and  charm,  and  its  very  faults  were 
of  use  in  softening  the  solemnity  and  rudeness  of  previ- 
ous prose.  The  story  is  long,  and  is  more  a  loose  frame- 
work into  which  Lyly  could  fit  his  thoughts  on  love, 
friendship,  education,  and  religion,  than  a  true  story.  It 
made  its  mark  because  it  fell  in  with  all  the  fantastic  and 
changeable  life  of  the  time.  Its  far-fetched  conceits,  its 
extravagance  of  gallantry,  its  endless  metaphors  from  the 
classics  and  especially  from  natural  history,  its  curious 
and  gorgeous  descriptions  of  dress,  and  its  pale  imitation 
of  chivalry,  were  all  reflected  in  the  life  and  talk  and 
dress  of  the  court  of  Elizabeth.  It  became  the  fashion 
to  talk  "  Euphuism,"  and,  like  the  Utopia  of  More,  Lyly's 
book  has  created  an  English  word. 

The  Arcadia  was  the  work  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and 


IV  THE    ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  lO/ 

though  written  about  1580,  did  not  appear  till  after  his 
death.  It  is  more  poetic  and  more  careless  in  style  than 
the  Euphues,  but  it  endeavours  to  get  rid  of  the  mere 
quaintness  for  quaintness'  sake,  and  of  the  far-fetched 
fancies,  of  Euphuism.  It  is  less  the  image  of  the  time 
than  of  the  man.  We  know  that  bright  and  noble  figure, 
the  friend  of  Spenser,  the  lover  of  Stella,  the  last  of  the 
old  knights,  the  poet,  the  critic,  and  the  Christian,  who, 
wounded  to  the  death,  gave  up  the  cup  of  water  to  a 
dying  soldier.  We  find  his  whole  spirit  in  the  story  of 
the  Arcadia,  in  the  first  two  books  and  part  of  the  third, 
which  alone  were  written  by  him.  It  is  a  pastoral  ro- 
mance, after  the  fashion  of  the  Spanish  romances,  col- 
oured by  his  love  of  his  sister.  Lady  Pembroke,  and  by 
the  scenery  of  Wilton  under  the  woods  of  which  he  wrote 
it.  The  characters  are  real,  but  the  story  is  confused 
by  endless  digressions.  The  sentiment  is  too  fine  and 
delicate  for  the  world  of  action.  The  descriptions  are 
picturesque ;  a  quaint  or  poetic  thought  or  an  epigram 
appear  in  every  line.  There  is  no  real  art  in  it,  nor  is  it 
true  prose.  But  it  is  so  full  of  poetical  thought  that  it 
became  a  mine  into  which  poets  dug  for  subjects. 

64.  Poetic  Criticism  began  before  the  publication  of 
the  Faerie  Queene,  and  its  rise  shows  the  interest  now 
awakened  in  poetry.  The  Discourse  of  English  Poetrie, 
1586,  written  by  WilHam  Webbe  "to  stirre  up  some  other 
of  meet  abilitie  to  bestow  travell  on  the  matter,"  was 
followed  three  years  after  by  the  Art  of  English  Poesie, 
attributed   to   George   Puttenham,   an   elaborate    book, 


I08  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

"  written,"  he  says,  "  to  help  the  courtiers  and  the  gen- 
tlewomen of  the  court  to  write  good  poetry,  that  the  art 
may  become  vulgar  for  all  Englishmen's  use,"  and  the 
phrase  marks  the  interest  now  taken  in  poetry  by  the 
highest  society  in  England.  Sidney  himself  joined  in 
this  critical  movement.  His  Apology  for  Poetrie,  the 
style  of  which  is  much  more  like  prose  than  that  of  his 
Arcadia,  defended  against  Stephen  Gosson's  School  of 
Abuse  in  which  poetry  and  plays  were  attacked  from  the 
Puritan  point  of  view,  the  nobler  uses  of  poetry.  But 
he,  with  his  contemporary,  Gabriel  Harvey,  was  so  en- 
thralled by  the  classical  traditions  that  he  also  defended 
the  "unities"  and  attacked  all  mixture  of  tragedy  and 
comedy,  that  is,  he  supported  all  that  Shakespeare  was 
destined  to  violate.  The  Defence  of  Rhyme,  written 
much  later  by  Samuel  Daniel,  and  which  finally  destroyed 
the  attempt  to  bring  classical  metres  into  our  poetry; 
and  also  Campion's  effort,  in  his  Observations,  in  favour 
of  rhymeless  verse,  must  be  mentioned  here.  Their 
matter  belongs  to  this  time. 

65.  Later  Prose  Literature.  —  (i.)  Theological  Litera- 
ture remained  for  some  years  after  1580  only  a  literature 
of  pamphlets.  Puritanism,  in  its  attack  on  the  stage, 
and  in  the  Martin  Marprelate  controversy  upon  episcopal 
government  in  the  Church,  flooded  England  with  small 
books.  Lord  Bacon  even  joined  in  the  latter  contro- 
versy, and  Nash  the  dramatist  made  himself  famous  in 
the  war  by  the  vigour  and  fierceness  of  his  wit.  Period- 
ical writing  was,  as  it  \vere,  started  on  its  course.     Over 


IV  THE   ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  IO9 

this  troubled  and  multitudinous  sea  rose  at  last  the 
stately  work  of  Richard  Hooker.  It  was  in  1594  that 
the  first  four  books  of  The  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity^ 
a  defence  of  the  Church  against  the  Puritans,  were  given 
to  the  world.  Before  his  death  he  finished  the  other 
four.  The  book  has  remained  ever  since  a  standard 
work.  It  is  as  much  moral  and  political  as  theological. 
Its  style  is  grave,  clear,  and  often  musical.  He  adorned 
it  with  the  figures  of  poetry,  but  he  used  them  with 
temperance,  and  the  grand  and  rolling  rhetoric  with 
which  he  often  concludes  an  argument  is  kept  for  its 
right  place.  On  the  whole,  it  is  the  first  monument  of 
splendid  literary  prose  that  we  possess. 

(2.)  We  may  place  beside  it,  as  other  great  prose  of 
Elizabeth's  later  time,  the  development  of  The  Essay  in 
Lord  Bacon's  Essays,  1597,  and  Ben  Jonson's  Dis- 
coveries, published  after  his  death.  The  highest  literary 
merit  of  Bacon's  Essays  is  their  combination  of  charm 
and  of  poetic  prose  with  conciseness  of  expression  and 
fulness  of  thought.  But  the  oratorical  and  ideal  manner 
in  which,  with  his  variety,  he  sometimes  wrote,  is  best 
seen  in  his  New  Atlantis,  that  imaginary  land  in  the 
unreachable  seas. 

(3.)  The  Literature  of  Travel  ws-s  carried  on  by  the 
publication  in  1589  of  Hakluyt's  Navigation,  Voyages, 
and  Discoveries  of  the  English  Nation.  The  influence  of 
a  compilation  of  this  kind,  containing  the  great  deeds  of 
the  English  on  the  seas,  has  been  felt  ever  since  in  the 
literature  of  fiction  and  poetry. 


no  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

(4.)  In  the  Tales,  which  poured  out  like  a  flood  from 
the  "university  wits,"  from  such  men  as  Peele,  and 
Lodge,  and  Greene,  we  find  the  origin  of  English  fiction, 
and  the  subjects  of  many  of  our  plays  ;  while  the  fan- 
tastic desire  to  revive  the  practices  of  chivalry  which  was 
expressed  in  the  Arcadia,  found  food  in  the  continuous 
translation  of  romances,  chiefly  of  the  Charlemagne 
cycle,  but  now  more  from  Spain  than  from  France ;  and 
in  the  reading  of  the  Italian  poets,  Boiardo,  Tasso,  and 
Ariosto,  who  supplied  a  crowd  of  our  books  with  the 
machinery  of  magic,  and  with  conventional  descriptions 
of  nature  and  of  women's  beauty. 

66.  Edmund  Spenser.  —  The  later  Elizabethan  poetry 
begins  with  the  Shepheards  Calendar  of  Spenser. 
Spenser  was  bom  in  London  in  1552,  and  educated  at 
the  Merchant  Taylors'  Grammar  School,  which  he  left 
for  Cambridge  in  April,  1569.  There  seems  to  be  evi- 
dence that  in  this  year  the  Sonnets  of  Petrarca  and  the 
Visions  of  Bellay  afterwards  published  in  159 1,  were 
written  by  him  for  a  miscellany  of  verse  and  prose  issued 
by  Van  der  Noodt,  a  refiigee  Flemish  physician.  At 
sixteen  or  seventeen,  then,  he  began  literary  work.  At 
college  Gabriel  Harvey,  a  scholar  and  critic,  and  the 
Hobbinoll  of  Spenser's  works,  and  Edward  Kirke,  the 
E.  K.  of  the  Shepheards  Calendar,  were  his  friends.  In 
1576  he  took  his  degree  of  M.A.,  and  before  he  returned 
to  London  spent  some  time  in  the  wilds  of  Lancashire, 
where  he  fell  in  love  with  the  "  Rosalind  "  of  his  poetry, 
a  "  fair  widowe's  daughter  of  the  glen."     His  love  was 


rv  THE    ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  III 

not  returned,  a  rival  interfered,  but  he  clung  fast  until 
his  marriage  to  this  early  passion.  His  disappointment 
drove  him  to  the  South,  and  there,  1579,  he  was  made 
known  through  Leicester  to  Leicester's  nephew,  Philip 
Sidney.  With  him,  and  perhaps  at  Penshurst,  the  Shep- 
heards  Calendar  was  finished  for  the  press,  and  the 
Faerie  Queene  conceived.  The  publication  of  the  for- 
mer work,  1579,  made  Spenser  the  first  poet  of  the  day, 
and  so  fresh  and  musical,  and  so  abundant  in  new  life 
were  its  twelve  eclogues,  that  men  felt  that  at  last  Eng- 
land had  given  birth  to  a  poet  as  original,  and  with  as 
much  metrical  art  as  Chaucer.  Each  month  of  the  year 
had  its  own  eclogue ;  some  were  concerned  with  his 
shattered  love,  two  of  them  were  fables,  three  of  them 
satires  on  the  lazy  clergy ;  one  was  devoted  to  fair  Eliza's 
praise :  one,  the  Oak  and  the  Briar,  prophesies  his 
mastery  over  allegory.  The  others  belong  to  rustic 
shepherd  Hfe.  The  English  of  Chaucer  is  imitated,  but 
the  work  is  full  of  a  new  spirit,  and  as  Spenser  had  begun 
with  translating  Petrarca,  so  here,  in  two  of  the  eclogues, 
he  imitates  Clement  Marot.  The  "  Puritanism  "  of  the 
poem  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  Faerie  Queene  which  he 
now  began  to  compose.  Save  in  abhorrence  of  Rome, 
Spenser  does  not  share  in  the  politics  of  Puritanism. 
Nor  does  he  separate  himself  from  the  world.  He  is  as 
much  at  home  in  society  and  with  the  arts  as  any  literary 
courtier  of  the  day.  He  was  Puritan  in  his  attack  on  the 
sloth  and  pomp  of  the  clergy ;  but  his  moral  ideal,  built 
up,  as  it  was,  out  of  Christianity  and  Platonism,  rose  far 
above  the  narrower  ideal  of  Puritanism. 


XI2  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  chap. 

In  the  next  year,  1580,  he  went  to  Ireland  with  Lord 
Grey  of  Wilton  as  secretary,  and  afterwards  saw  and 
learnt  that  condition  of  things  which  he  described  in  his 
View  of  the  Present  State  of  Ireland.  He  was  made 
Clerk  of  Degrees  in  the  Court  of  Chancery  in  15  81,  and 
Clerk  of  the  Council  of  Munster  in  1586,  and  it  was  then 
that  the  manor  and  castle  of  Kilcolman  were  granted  to 
him.  Here,  at  the  foot  of  the  Galtees,  and  bordered  to 
the  north  by  the  wild  country,  the  scenery  of  which  is 
frequently  painted  in  the  Faerie  Queene,  and  in  whose 
woods  and  savage  places  such  adventures  constantly  took 
place  in  the  service  of  Elizabeth  as  are  recorded  in  the 
Faerie  Queene,  the  first  three  books  of  that  great  poem 
were  finished. 

67.  The  Faerie  Queene. — The  plan  of  the  poem  is 
described  in  Spenser's  prefatory  letter  to  Raleigh.  The 
twelve  books  were  to  tell  the  warfare  of  twelve  Knights, 
in  whom  twelve  virtues  were  represented.  They  are 
sent  forth  from  the  court  of  Gloriana,  Queen  of  Fairy- 
land, and  their  warfare  is  against  the  vices  and  errors,  im- 
personated, which  opposed  those  virtues.  In  Arthur,  the 
Prince,  the  Magnificence  of  the  whole  of  virtue  is  repre- 
sented, and  he  was  at  last  to  unite  himself  in  marriage  to 
the  Faerie  Queene,  that  divine  glory  of  God  to  which  all 
human  act  and  thought  aspired.  Six  books  of  this  plan 
were  finished ;  the  legends  of  Holiness,  Temperance,  and 
Chastity,  of  Friendship,  Justice,  and  Courtesy.  The  two 
posthumous  cantos  on  Mutability  seem  to  have  been  part 
of  a  seventh  legend,  on  Constancy,  and  their  splendid 


IV  THE   ELIZABETHAN   LITERATURE  II 3 

work  makes  us  the  more  regret  that  the  story  of  the 
poem  being  finished  is  not  true.  Alongside  of  the  spirit- 
ual allegory  is  the  historical  one,  in  which  Elizabeth  is 
Gloriana,  and  Mary  of  Scotland  Duessa ;  and  Leicester, 
and  at  times  Sidney,  Prince  Arthur,  and  Lord  Grey  is 
Arthegall,  and  Raleigh  Timias,  and  Philip  11.  the  Soldan, 
or  Grantorto.  In  the  midst,  other  allegories  slip  in,  re- 
ferring to  events  of  the  day,  and  Elizabeth  becomes 
Belphcebe  and  Britomart,  and  Mary  is  Radegund,  and 
Sidney  is  Calidore,  and  Alen^on  is  Braggadochio.  At 
least,  these  are  considered  probable  attributions.  The 
dreadful  "  justice  "  done  in  Ireland,  by  the  "  iron  man," 
and  the  wars  in  Belgium,  and  Norfolk's  conspiracy,  and 
the  Armada,  and  the  trial  of  Mary  are  also  shadowed 
forth. 

The  allegory  is  clear  in  the  first  two  books.  After- 
wards it  is  troubled  with  digressions,  sub-allegories,  gene- 
alogies, with  anything  that  Spenser's  fancy  led  him  to 
introduce.  Stories  are  dropt  and  never  taken  up  again, 
and  the  whole  tale  is  so  tangled  that  it  loses  the  interest 
of  narrative.  But  it  retains  the  interest  of  exquisite  alle- 
gory. It  is  the  poem  of  the  noble  powers  of  the  human 
soul  struggling  towards  union  with  God,  and  warring 
against  all  the  forms  of  evil ;  and  these  powers  become 
real  personages,  whose  lives  and  battles  Spenser  tells  in 
verse  so  musical  and  so  gliding,  so  delicately  wrought,  so 
rich  in  imaginative  ornament,  and  so  inspired  with  the 
finer  Hfe  of  beauty,  that  he  has  been  called  the  poets' 
Poet.     But  he  i§  the  poet  of  all  men  who  love  poetry. 


114  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Descriptions  like  those  of  the  House  of  Pride  and  the 
Mask  of  Cupid,  and  of  the  Months,  are  so  vivid  in  form 
and  colour,  that  they  have  always  made  subjects  for 
artists ;  while  the  allegorical  personages  are,  to  the  very 
last  detail,  wrought  out  by  an  imagination  which  de- 
scribes not  only  the  general  character,  but  the  special 
characteristics  of  the  Virtues  or  the  Vices,  of  the  Months 
of  the  year,  or  of  the  Rivers  of  England.  In  its  ideal 
whole,  the  poem  represents  the  new  love  of  chivalry, 
of  classical  learning ;  the  delight  in  mystic  theories  of 
love  and  religion,  in  allegorical  schemes,  in  splendid 
spectacles  and  pageants,  in  wild  adventure ;  the  love  of 
England,  the  hatred  of  Spain,  the  strange  worship  of  the 
queen,  even  Spenser's  own  new  love.  It  takes  up  and 
uses  the  popular  legends  of  fairies,  dwarfs,  and  giants,  all 
the  recovered  romance  and  machinery  of  the  Italian 
epics,  and  mingles  them  up  with  the  wild  scenery  of 
Ireland,  with  the  savages  and  wonders  of  the  New  World. 
Almost  the  whole  spirit  of  the  Renaissance  under  Eliza- 
beth, except  its  coarser  and  baser  elements,  is  in  its 
pages.  Of  anything  impure,  or  ugly,  or  violent,  there 
is  no  trace.  And  Spenser  adds  to  all  his  own  sacred 
love  of  love,  his  own  pre-eminent  sense  of  the  loveUness 
of  loveliness,  walking  through  the  whole  of  this  woven 
world  of  faerie  — 

"  With  the  moon's  beauty  and  the  moon's  soft  pace." 

The   first  three  books  were  finished  in  Ireland,  and 
Raleigh  listened  to  them  in  1589  at  Kilcolmau  Castle, 


IV  The   ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  11^ 

among  the  alder  shades  of  the  river  MuUa  that  fed  the 
lake  below  the  castle.  Delighted  with  the  poem,  he 
brought  Spenser  to  England,  and  the  queen,  the  court, 
and  the  whole  of  England  soon  shared  in  Raleigh's 
delight.  It  was  the  first  great  ideal  poem  that  England 
had  produced ;  it  places  him  side  by  side  with  Milton, 
but  on  a  throne  built  of  wholly  different  material.  It  has 
never  ceased  to  make  poets,  and  it  will  live,  as  he  said 
in  his  dedication  to  the  queen,  "  with  the  eternitie  of  her 
fame." 

68.  Spenser's  Minor  Poems. — The  next  year,  1591, 
Spenser,  being  still  in  England,  collected  his  smaller 
poems,  most  of  which  seem  to  be  early  work,  and 
published  them.  Among  them  Mother  Hubberd's  Tale 
is  a  remarkable  satire,  somewhat  in  the  manner  of 
Chaucer,  on  society,  on  the  evils  of  a  beggar  soldiery,  of 
the  Church,  of  the  court,  and  of  misgovernment.  The 
Ruins  of  Time,  and  still  more  the  Tears  of  the  Muses, 
support  the  statement  that  Hterature  was  looked  on  coldly 
previous  to  1580.  Sidney  had  died  in  1586,  and  three  of 
these  poems  bemoan  his  death.  The  others  are  of  slight 
importance,  and  the  whole  collection  was  entitled  Com- 
plaints. His  Daphnaida  seems  to  have  also  appeared  in 
1591.  Returning  to  Ireland,  he  gave  an  account  of  his 
visit  and  of  the  court  of  Elizabeth  in  Colin  Cloufs  come 
Home  again,  and  at  last,  after  more  than  a  year's  pursuit, 
won,  in  1594,  his  second  love  for  his  wife,  and  found  with 
her  perfect  happiness.  A  long  series  of  lovely  "  Sonnets  " 
—  the  Atnoretti,  records  the  progress  of  his  wooing ;  and 


Il6  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  Epithalamion,  his  exultant  marriage  hymn,  is  the  most 
glorious  love-song  in  the  English  tongue.  These  three 
were  published  in  1595.  At  the  close  of  1595  he  brought 
to  England  in  a  second  visit  the  last  three  books  of  the 
Faerie  Queene.  The  next  year  he  spent  in  London,  and 
published  these  books,  as  well  as  the  Prothalamion  on 
the  marriage  of  Lord  Worcester's  daughters,  the  Hymns 
on  Love  and  Beauty  and  on  Heavenly  Love  and  Beauty. 
The  two  first  hymns  were  rapturously  written  in  his 
youth;  the  two  others,  now  written,  and  with  even 
greater  rapture,  enshrine  that  love  philosophy  of  Petrarca 
which  makes  earthly  love  a  ladder  to  the  love  of  God. 
The  close  of  his  life  was  sorrowful.  In  1598,  Tyrone's 
rebellion  drove  him  out  of  Ireland.  Kilcolman  was 
sacked  and  burnt,  one  of  his  children  perished  in  the 
flames,  and  Spenser  and  his  family  fled  for  their  lives  to 
England.  Broken-hearted,  poor,  but  not  forgotten,  the 
poet  died  in  a  London  tavern.  All  his  fellows  went  with 
his  body  to  the  grave,  where,  close  by  Chaucer,  he  lies  in 
Westminster  Abbey.  London,  "  his  most  kindly  nurse," 
takes  care  also  of  his  dust,  and  England  keeps  him  in 
her  love. 

69.  Later  Elizabethan  Poetry :  Translations. — There 
are  three  translators  that  take  literary  rank  among  the 
crowd  that  carried  on  the  work  of  the  earlier  time.  Two 
mark  the  influence  of  Italy,  one  the  more  powerful  influ- 
ence of  the  Greek  spirit.  Sir  John  Harington  in  1591 
translated  Ariosto's  Orlando  Furioso,  Fairfax  in  1600 
translated  Tasso's  Jerusalem^  and  his  book  is  "  one  of  the 


tV  THE   ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  11/ 

glories  of  Elizabeth's  reign."  But  the  noblest  translation 
is  that  of  Homer's  whole  work  by  George  Chapman,  the 
dramatist,  the  first  part  of  which  appeared  in  1598.  The 
vivid  life  and  energy  of  the  time,  its  creative  power  and 
its  force,  are  expressed  in  this  poem,  which  is  "  more  an 
Elizabethan  tale  written  about  Achilles  and  Ulysses " 
than  a  translation.  The  rushing  gallop  of  the  long  four- 
teen-syllable  stanza  in  which  it  is  written  has  the  fire  and 
swiftness  of  Homer,  but  it  has  not  his  directness  or  dig- 
nity. Its  "  inconquerable  quaintness"  and  diffuseness 
are  wholly  unlike  the  pure  form  and  light  and  measure  ot 
Greek  work.  But  it  is  a  distinct  poem  of  such  power 
that  it  will  excite  and  delight  all  lovers  of  poetry,  as  it 
excited  and  delighted  Keats.  John  Florio's  Translation 
of  the  Essays  of  Montaigne,  1603,  and  North's  Plutarch, 
are  also,  though  in  prose,  to  be  mentioned  here,  because 
Shakespeare  used  the  books,  and  because  we  must  mark 
Montaigne's  influence  on  English  literature  even  before 
his  retranslation  by  Charles  Cotton. 

70.  The  Four  Phases  of  Poetry  after  1579.  —  Spenser 
reflected  in  his  poems  the  romantic  spirit  of  the  Enghsh 
Renaissance.  The  other  poetry  of  Elizabeth's  reign 
reflected  the  whole  of  English  Life,  The  best  way  to 
arrange  it  —  omitting  as  yet  the  Drama  —  is  in  an  order 
parallel  to  the  growth  of  the  national  life,  and  the  proof 
that  it  is  the  best  way  is,  that  on  the  whole  such  an  his- 
torical order  is  a  true  chronological  order.  First,  then, 
if  we  compare  England  after  1580,  as  writers  have  often 
done,  to  an  ardent  youth,  we  shall  find  in  the  poetry  of 


Il8  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  first  years  that  followed  that  date  all  the  elements  of 
youth.  It  is  a  poetry  of  love,  and  romance,  and  imag- 
ination, —  of  Romeo  and  Juliet.  Secondly,  and  later  on, 
when  EngHshmen  grew  older  in  feeling,  their  enthusiasm, 
which  had  flitted  here  and  there  in  action  and  literature 
over  all  kinds  of  subjects,  settled  down  into  a  steady 
enthusiasm  for  England  itself.  The  country  entered  on 
its  early  manhood,  and  parallel  with  this  there  is  the 
great  outbreak  of  historical  plays,  and  a  set  of  poets  whom 
I  will  call  the  Patriotic  Poets.  Thirdly,  and  later  still, 
the  fire  and  strength  of  the  people,  becoming  inward, 
resulted  in  a  graver  and  more  thoughtful  national  life, 
and  parallel  with  this  are  the  tragedies  of  Shakespeare 
and  the  poets  who  have  been  called  philosophical. 
These  three  classes  of  poets  overlapped  one  another, 
and  grew  up  gradually,  but  on  the  whole  their  succes- 
sion is  the  image  of  a  real  succession  of  national  thought 
and  emotion. 

h  fourth  and  separate  phase  does  not  represent,  as  these 
do,  a  new  national  life,  a  new  religion,  and  new  politics, 
but  the  despairing  struggle  of  the  old  faith  against  the 
new.  There  were  numbers  of  men,  such  as  Wordsworth 
has  finely  sketched  in  old  Norton  in  the  Doe  of  Ry  Is  tone, 
who  vainly  and  sorrowfully  strove  against  all  the  new 
national  elements.  Robert  Southwell,  of  Norfolk,  a 
Jesuit  priest,  was  the  poet  of  Roman  Catholic  England. 
Imprisoned  for  three  years,  racked  ten  times,  and  finally 
executed,  he  wrote,  while  confessor  to  Lady  Arundel,  a 
number  of  poems   published   at  various  intervals,  and 


IV  THE   ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  II 9 

finally  collected  under  the  title,  Sf.  Peter's  Complaint, 
Mary  Magdalen's  Tears,  with  other  works  of  the  Author, 
R.S.  The  Mceonice,  and  a  short  prose  work  Marie  Mag- 
dalen's Funerall  Tears,  became  also  very  popular.  It 
marks  not  only  the  large  Roman  CathoUc  element  in  the 
country,  but  also  the  strange  contrasts  of  the  time  that 
eleven  editions  of  books  with  these  titles  were  published 
between  1595  and  1609,  at  a  time  when,  the  Venus  and 
Adonis  of  Shakespeare  led  the  way  for  a  multitude  of 
poems  —  following  on  Marlowe's  Hero  and  Leander  and 
Lodge's  Glaucus  and  Scylla  —  which  sang  devotedly  of 
love  and  amorous  joy. 

71.  The  Love  Poetry.  —  I  have  called  it  by  this  name 
because  all  its  best  work  is  almost  limited  to  that  subject 
—  the  subject  of  youth.  The  Love  sonnets,  written  in 
a  series,  are  a  feature  of  the  time.  The  best  are  Sidney's 
Astrophel  and  Stella,  Daniel's  Delia,  Constable's  Diana, 
Drayton's  Idea,  Spenser's  Amoretti,  and  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets.  More  than  twelve  collections  of  these  love 
sonnets,  each  dedicated  to  one  lady,  and  often  a  hun- 
dred in  number,  were  published  between  1593  and  1596, 
and  these  had  been  preceded  by  many  others. 

The  Miscellanies,  to  which  I  have  already  alluded, 
and  the  best  of  which  were  The  Passionate  Pilgrim, 
England's  Helicon,  and  Davison's  Rhapsody,  were 
scarcely  less  numerous  than  the  Song-books  published 
with  music,  full  of  delightful  lyrics.  The  wonder  is  that 
the  lyrical  level  in  such  a  multitude  of  short  poems  is 
so  high  throughout.     Some  songs  reach  a  first-rate  ex- 


I20  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

cellence,  but  even  the  least  good  have  the  surprising 
spirit  of  poetry  in  them.  The  best  of  them  are  "  old 
and  plain,  and  dallying  with  the  innocence  of  love," 
childlike  in  their  natural  sweetness  and  freshness,  but 
full  also  of  a  southern  ardour  of  passion.  Shakespeare's 
excel  the  others  in  their  gay  rejoicing,  their  firm  reality, 
their  exquisite  ease,  and  when  in  the  plays,  gain  a 
new  beauty  from  their  fitness  to  their  dramatic  place. 
Others  possess  a  quaint  pastoralism  like  shepherd  life 
in  porcelain,  such  as  Marlowe's  well-known  song,  "  Come 
live  with  me,  and  be  my  love ; "  others  a  splendour  of 
love  and  beauty  as  in  Lodge's  Song  of  Rosaline ^  and 
Spenser's  on  his  marriage.  To  specialise  the  various 
kinds  would  be  too  long,  for  there  never  was  in  our 
land  a  richer  outburst  of  lyrical  ravishment  and  fancy. 
England  was  like  a  grove  in  spring,  full  of  birds  in 
revel  and  solace.  Love  poems  of  a  longer  kind  were 
also  made,  such  as  Marlowe's  Hero  and  Leander,  the 
Venus  and  Adonis  and,  if  we  may  date  them  here,  the 
Elegies  of  John  Donne.  I  mention  only  a  few  of  these 
poems,  the  mark  of  which  is  a  luscious  sensuousness. 
There  were  also  religious  poems,  the  reflection  of  the 
Puritan  and  Church  elements  in  English  society.  They 
were  collected  under  such  titles  as  the  Handful  of 
Honeysuckles,  the  Poor  Widow's  Mite,  Psalms  and 
Sonnets,  and  there  are  some  good  things  among  them 
written  by  William  Hunnis. 

72.   The  Patriotic  Poets. — Among  all  this  poetry  of 
Romance,   Religion,   and   Love,   rose    a    poetry  which 


IV  THE   ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  121 

devoted  itself  to  the  glory  of  England.  It  was  chiefly 
historical,  and  as  it  may  be  said  to  have  had  its  germ 
in  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  so  it  had  its  perfect 
flower  in  the  historical  dramas  of  Shakespeare.  Men 
had  now  begun  to  have  a  great  pride  in  England.  She 
had  stepped  into  the  foremost  rank,  had  outwitted 
France,  subdued  internal  foes,  beaten  and  humbled 
Spain  on  every  sea.  Hence  the  history  of  the  land 
became  precious,  and  the  very  rivers,  hills,  and  plains 
honourable,  and  to  be  sung  and  praised  in  verse.  This 
poetic  impulse  is  best  represented  in  the  works  of  three 
men  —  William  Warner,  Samuel  Daniel,  and  Michael 
Drayton.  Bom  within  a  few  years  of  each  other,  about 
1560,  they  all  lived  beyond  the  century,  and  the  national 
poetry  they  set  on  foot  lasted  when  the  romantic  poetry 
lost  its  wealth  and  splendour. 

William  Warner's  great  book  was  AlbiorCs  England, 
1586,  a  history  of  England  in  fourteen-syllable  verse 
from  the  Deluge  to  Queen  Elizabeth.  It  is  clever, 
humorous,  now  grave,  now  gay,  crowded  with  stories, 
and  runs  to  10,000  lines.  Its  popularity  was  great, 
and  the  English  in  which  it  was  written  deserved  it. 
Such  stories  in  it  as  Argentik  and  Curan,  and  the 
Patient  Countess,  prove  Warner  to  have  had  a  true, 
pathetic  vein  of  poetry.  His  English  is  not  however  so 
good  as  that  of  "  well-languaged  Daniel,"  who,  among 
tragedies  and  pastoral  comedies,  the  noble  series  of 
sonnets  to  Delia  and  poems  of  pure  fancy,  wrote  The 
Complaint  of  Rosamond,   far   more   poetical   than  his 


122  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAR 

Steadier,  even  prosaic  Civil  Wars  of  York  and  Lan- 
caster. Spenser  saw  in  him  a  new  "  shepherd  of  poetry 
who  did  far  surpass  the  rest,"  and  Coleridge  says  that 
the  style  of  his  Hymen^s  Triumph  may  be  declared 
"  imperishable  English."  Of  the  three  the  easiest  poet 
was  Drayton.  The  Barons'  Wars,  England's  Heroical 
Epistles  J  1597,  The  Miseries  of  Queen  Margaret,  and 
Four  Legends,  together  with  the  brilliant  Ballad  of 
Agincourt  prove  his  patriotic  fervour.  Not  content  with 
these,  he  set  himself  to  glorify  the  whole  of  his  land  in 
the  Polyolbion,  thirty  books,  and  nearly  100,000  lines. 
It  is  a  description  in  Alexandrines  of  the  "tracts, 
mountains,  forests,  and  other  parts  of  this  renowned 
isle  of  Britain,  with  intermixture  of  the  most  remark- 
able stories,  antiquities,  wonders,  pleasures,  and  com- 
modities of  the  same,  digested  into  a  poem."  It  was 
not  a  success,  though  it  deserved  success.  Its  great 
length  was  against  it,  but  the  real  reason  was  that  this 
kind  of  poetry  had  had  its  day.  It  appeared  in  16 13, 
in  James  I.'s  reign.  He,  as  well  as  Daniel,  did  other 
work.  Indeed  Drayton  is  a  striking  instance  of  the  way 
in  which  these  divisions,  which  I  have  made  for  the  sake 
of  a  general  order,  overlapped  one  another.  He  is  as 
much  the  love  poet  as  the  patriotic  poet  in  his  eclogues 
of  1593  and  in  his  later  Idea;  he  is  also  a  religious,  a 
satirical,  a  lyrical,  and  a  fairy  poet.  He  plays  on  every 
kind  of  harp. 

73.   Philosophical    Poets.  —  Before  the    date   of  the 
Polyolbion  a  change  had  come.     As  the  patriotic  poets 


IV  THE   ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE  I23 

on  the  whole  came  after  the  romantic,  so  the  patriotic, 
on  the  whole,  were  followed  by  the  philosophical  poets. 
The  land  was  settled ;  enterprise  ceased  to  be  the  first 
thing ;  men  sat  down  to  think,  and  in  poetry  questions 
of  religious  and  poUtical  philosophy  were  treated  with 
"  sententious  reasoning,  grave,  subtle,  and  condensed." 
Shakespeare,  in  his  passage  from  comedy  to  tragedy,  in 
1 601,  illustrates  this  change.  The  two  poets  who  best 
represent  it  are  Sir  Jno.  Davies  and  Fulke  Greville, 
Lord  Brooke.  In  Davies  himself  we  find  an  instance  of 
it.  His  earlier  poem  of  the  Orchestra,  1596,  in  which 
the  whole  world  is  explained  as  a  dance,  is  as  exultant 
as  Spenser.  His  later  poem,  1599,  is  compact  and  vig- 
orous reasoning,  for  the  most  part  without  fancy.  Its 
very  title,  Nosce  te  ipsum  —  Know  Thyself — and  its 
divisions,  i.  "On  humane  learning,"  2.  "The  immor- 
tality of  the  soul "  —  mark  the  alteration.  Two  little 
poems,  one  of  Bacon's,  on  the  Life  of  Man,  as  a  bubble, 
and  one  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton's,  on  the  Character  of  a 
Happy  Life,  are  instances  of  the  same  change.  It  is  still 
more  marked  in  Lord  Brooke's  long,  obscure  poems  On 
Human  Learning,  on  Wars,  on  Monarchy,  and  on  Relig- 
ion. They  are  political  and  historical  treatises,  not 
poems,  and  all  in  them,  said  Lamb,  "is  made  frozen 
and  rigid  by  intellect."  Apart  from  poetry,  "they  are 
worth  notice  as  an  indication  of  that  thinking  spirit 
on  political  science  which  was  to  produce  the  riper 
speculations  of  Hobbes,  Harrington,  and  Locke." 
Brooke  too,  in   a  happier  mood,  was  a  lyrist;  and  his 


124  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  '  CHAP. 

collection,  Ccslica,  has  some  of  the  graces  of  love  and 
its  imagination. 

74.  Satirical  Poetry,  which  lives  best  when  imaginative 
creation  begins  to  decay,  arose  also  towards  the  end  of 
Elizabeth's  reign.  It  had  been  touched  in  the  begin- 
ning before  Spenser  by  Gascoigne's  Steele  Glas,  but  had 
no  further  growth  save  in  prose  until  1593,  when  John 
Donne  is  supposed  to  have  written  some  of  his  Satires. 
Thomas  Lodge,  Joseph  Hall,  John  Marston,  wrote  satir- 
ical poems  in  the  last  part  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
These  satires  are  all  written  in  a  rugged,  broken  style, 
supposed  to  be  the  proper  style  for  satire.  Donne's  are 
the  best,  and  are  so  because  he  was  a  true  poet.  Though 
his  work  was  mostly  done  in  the  reign  of  James  I.,  and 
though  his  poetical  reputation,  and  his  influence  (which 
was  very  great)  did  not  reach  their  height  till  after  the 
publication  in  1633  of  all  his  poems,  he  really  belongs^ 
by  dint  of  his  youthful  sensuousness,  of  his  imaginative 
flame,  and  of  his  sad  and  powerful  thought,  to  the  Eliza- 
bethans. So  also  does  WilUam  Drummond,  of  Haw- 
thomden,  whose  work  was  done  in  the  reign  of  James  I., 
and  whose  name  is  linked  by  poetry  and  friendship  to 
Sir  William  Alexander,  Earl  of  Stirling.  Both  are  the 
result  of  the  Elizabethan  influence  extending  to  Scotland. 
Drummond's  sonnets  and  madrigals  have  some  of  the 
grace  of  Sidney,  and  he  rose  at  intervals  into  grave  and 
noble  verse,  as  in  his  sonnet  on  John  the  Baptist.  We 
turn  now  to  the  drama,  which  in  this  age  grew  into 
magnificence. 


IV  THE   ENGLISH   DRAMA  125 

THE  DRAMA 

75.  Early  Dramatic  Representation  in  England. — 
The  English  Drama  grew  up  through  the  Mystery  and 
the  Miracle  play,  the  Morality  and  the  Interlude,  the 
rude  farce  of  the  strolling  players  and  the  pageant. 
The  Mystery  was  the  representation  (at  first  in  or  near 
the  Church,  and  by  the  clergy ;  and  then  in  the  towns, 
and  by  the  laity)  of  the  events  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  which  bore  on  the  Fall  and  the  Redemption 
of  Man.  The  Miracle  play,  though  distinct  elsewhere 
from  the  Mystery,  was  the  common  name  of  both  in 
England,  and  was  the  representation  of  some  legendary 
story  of  a  saint  or  martyr.  These  stories  gave  more 
freedom  of  speech,  a  more  worldly  note,  and  a  greater 
range  of  characters  to  the  mystery  plays.  They  also 
supplied  a  larger  opportunity  for  the  comic  element.  The 
Miracle  plays  of  England  fell  before  long  into  two  classes, 
represented  at  the  feasts  of  Christmas  Day  and  Easter 
Day;  and  about  1262  the  town-guilds  took  them  into 
their  hands.  At  Christmas  the  Birth  of  Christ  was  rep- 
resented, and  the  events  which  made  it  necessary,  back 
to  the  Fall  of  Man.  At  Easter  the  Passion  was  repre- 
sented in  every  detail  up  to  the  Ascension,  and  the  play 
often  began  with  the  raising  of  Lazarus.  Sometimes  even 
the  Baptism  was  brought  in,  and  finally,  the  Last  Judg- 
ment was  added  to  the  double  series,  which  thus  em- 
braced the  whole  history  of  man  from  the  creation  to  the 
close.     About  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century 


126  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

these  two  series  were  brought  together  into  one,  and 
acted  on  Corpus  Christi  Day  on  a  great  moveable  stage 
in  the  open  spaces  of  the  towns.  The  whole  series  con- 
sisted of  a  number  of  short  plays  written  frequently  by 
different  authors,  and  each  guild  took  the  play  which 
suited  it  best.  In  a  short  time,  there  was  scarcely  a 
town  of  any  importance  in  England  from  Newcastle  to 
Exeter  which  had  not  its  Corpus  Christi  play,  and  the 
representations  lasted  from  one  day  to  eight  days.  Of 
these  sets  of  plays  we  possess  the  Towneley  plays,  32  in 
all,  those  of  York,  48  in  all,  those  of  Chester,  24  in  all, 
and  a  casual  collection,  called  of  Coventry,  of  later  and 
unconnected  plays.  Of  course,  these  sets  only  represent 
a  small  portion  of  the  Miracle  plays  of  England.  It  is 
not  improbable  that  every  little  town  had  its  own  maker 
of  them.  Any  play  that  pleased  was  carried  from  the 
town  to  the  castle,  from  the  castle,  it  may  be,  to  the 
court.  The  castle  chaplain  sometimes  composed  them  : 
the  king  kept  players  of  them  and  scenery  for  them. 
On  the  whole  this  irregular  drama  lasted,  if  we  take  in 
its  Anglo-Norman  beginnings  in  French  and  Latin,  for 
nearly  500  years,  from  11 10,  when  we  first  hear  at  St. 
Albans  of  the  Miracle  play  of  St.  Catherine,  to  the  reign 
of  Henry  III.,  when  The  Harrowing  of  Hell,  our  first 
extant  religious  drama  in  English,  was  acted,  and  then 
to  1580,  when  we  last  hear  of  the  representation  of  a 
Miracle  play  at  Coventry. 

76.   Separate  plays   preceded   and   existed   alongside 
of  these  large  series.     Not  only  on  the  days  of  Christ- 


IV  THE   ENGLISH   DRAMA  12/ 

mas,  Easter,  and  Corpus  Christi  were  plays  acted,  but 
plays  were  made  for  separate  feasts,  saints'  days,  and 
the  turns  of  the  year,  and  these  had  the  character  of 
the  counties  where  they  were  made.  The  villages  took 
them  up,  and  soon  began  to  ask  for  secular  as  well  as 
religious  representations  at  their  fairs  and  merry-mak- 
ings. The  strolling  players  answered  the  demand,  and 
secular  subjects  began  to  be  treated  with  romantic  or 
comic  aims,  and  with  some  closeness  to  natural  life. 
We  have  a  play  about  Robin  Hood  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  acted  on  May  Day;  the  Play  of  St.  George; 
the  Play  of  the  Wake  on  St.  John's  Eve.  Some  of  the 
farcical  parts  of  the  Miracle  plays,  isolated  from  the 
rest,  were  acted,  and  we  have  a  dramatic  fragment 
taken  from  the  very  secular  romance  of  Dame  Siriz, 
which  dates  from  the  time  of  Edward  I.  We  may  be 
sure  it  was  not  the  only  one. 

77.  The  Morality  begins  as  we  come  to  the  reign 
of  Edward  III.  We  hear  of  the  Play  of  the  Pater- 
noster, and  of  one  of  its  series,  the  Play  of  Laziness. 
But  the  oldest  extant  are  of  the  time  of  Henry  VI. 
Tlie  Castle  of  Constancy ;  Humanity ;  Spirit,  Will,  and 
Understanding — these  titles  partly  explain  what  the 
Morality  was.  It  was  a  play  in  which  the  characters 
were  the  Vices  and  Virtues,  with  the  addition  after- 
wards of  allegorical  personages,  such  as  Riches,  Good 
Deeds,  Confession,  Death,  and  any  human  condition  or 
quality  needed  for  the  play.  These  characters  were 
brought  together  in  a  rough  story,  at  the  end  of  whicl} 


128  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Virtue  triumphed,  or  some  moral  principle  was  estab- 
lished. The  later  dramatic  fool  grew  up  in  the  Moral- 
ities out  of  a  personage  called  "The  Vice,"  and  the 
humorous  element  was  introduced  by  the  retaining  of 
"  The  Devil "  from  the  Miracle  play  and  by  making 
The  Vice  torment  him.  We  draw  nearer  then  in  the 
Morality  to  the  regular  drama.  Its  story  had  to  be 
invented,  a  proper  plot  had  to  be  conceived,  a  clear 
end  fixed  upon,  to  produce  which  the  allegorical  char- 
acters acted  on  one  another.  We  are  on  the  very 
verge  of  the  natural  drama;  and  so  close  was  the 
relation  that  the  acting  of  Moralities  did  not  die  out 
till  about  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign.  A  certain  tran- 
sition to  the  regular  drama  may  be  observed  in  them 
when  historical  characters,  celebrated  for  a  virtue  or 
vice,  were  introduced  instead  of  the  virtue  or  the 
vice,  as  when  Aristides  took  the  place  of  Justice. 
Moreover,  as  the  heat  of  the  struggle  of  the  Reforma- 
tion increased,  the  Morality  was  used  to  support  a  side. 
Real  men  and  women  were  shown  under  the  thin  cloaks 
of  its  allegorical  characters.  The  stage  was  becoming  a 
living  power  when  this  began. 

78.  The  Interludes  must  next  be  noticed.  There  had 
been  interludes  in  the  Miracle  plays,  short,  humorous 
pieces,  interpolated  for  the  amusement  of  the  people. 
These  were  continued  in  the  Moralities,  and  were  made 
closer  still  to  popular  life.  It  occurred  to  John  Hev- 
wooD  to  identify  himself  with  this  form  of  drama,  and  to 
raise   the  Interludes  into  a  place  in  literature.     In  his 


rv  THE   ENGLISH    DRAMA  1 29 

hands,  from  1520  to  1540,  the  Interlude  became  a  kind 
of  farce,  and  he  wrote  several  for  the  amusement  of  the 
court  of  Henry  VIII.  He  drew  the  characters  from  real 
life  ;  in  many  cases  he  gave  them  the  names  of  men  and 
women,  but  he  retained  "  the  Vice  "  as  a  personage. 

79.  The  Regular  Drama:  its  First  Stage. — These 
were  the  beginnings  of  the  English  Drama.  To  trace 
the  many  and  various  windings  of  the  way  from  the 
Interludes  of  Heywood  to  the  regular  drama  of  Elizabeth 
were  too  long  and  too  involved  a  work  for  this  book. 
We  need  only  say  that  the  first  pure  EngHsh  comedy 
was  Ralph  Roister  Doister,  written  by  Nicholas  Udall, 
master  of  Eton,  known  to  have  been  acted  before  155 1, 
but  not  pubUshed  till  1566.  It  is  our  earliest  picture  of 
London  manners;  it  is  divided  into  regular  acts  and 
scenes,  and  is  made  in  rhyme.  The  first  EngHsh  tragedy 
is  Gorboduc,  or  Ferrex  and  Porrex,  written  by  Sackville 
and  Norton,  and  represented  in  1561.  The  story  was 
taken  from  British  legend ;  the  method  followed  that  of 
Seneca.  A  few  tragedies  on  the  same  classical  model  fol- 
lowed, but  before  long  this  classical  type  of  plays  died  out. 

For  twenty  years  or  so,  from  1560  to  1580,  the  drama 
was  learning  its  way  by  experiments.  Moralities  were 
still  made,  comedies,  tragi-comedies,  farces,  tragedies; 
and  sometimes  tragedy,  farce,  comedy,  and  morality  were 
rolled  into  one  play.  The  verse  of  the  drama  was  as 
unsettled  as  its  form.  The  plays  were  written  in  dog- 
gerel, in  the  fourteen-syllable  line,  in  prose,  and  in  a  ten- 
syllable  verse,  and  these  were  sometimes  mixed  in  the 

K 


130  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

same  play.  They  were  acted  chiefly  at  the  Universities, 
the  Inns  of  Court,  the  Court,  and  after  1576  by  players 
in  the  theatres.  Out  of  this  confusion  arose  1580-8 
(i)  two  sets  of  dramatic  writers,  the  "University  Wits" 
and  the  theatrical  playwrights;  (2)  a  distinct  dramatic 
verse,  the  blank  verse  destined  to  be  used  by  Marlowe, 
Peele,  and  Greene ;  and  (3)  the  licensed  theatre. 

80.  The  Theatre.  —  A  patent  was  given  in  1574  to 
the  Earl  of  Leicester's  servants  to  act  plays  in  any  town 
in  England,  and  they  built  in  1576  the  Blackfriars  Thea- 
tre. In  the  same  year  two  others  were  set  up  in  the 
fields  about  Shoreditch  — "The  Theatre"  and  "The 
Curtain."  The  Globe  Theatre,  built  for  Shakespeare 
and  his  fellows  in  1599,  may  stand  as  a  type  of  the  rest. 
In  the  form  of  a  hexagon  outside,  it  was  circular  within, 
and  open  to  the  weather,  except  above  the  stage.  The 
play  began  at  three  o'clock;  the  nobles  and  ladies  sat 
in  boxes  or  in  stools  on  the  stage,  the  people  stood  in 
the  pit  or  yard.  The  stage  itself,  strewn  with  rushes, 
was  a  naked  room,  with  a  blanket  for  a  ciurtain.  Wooden 
imitations  of  animals,  towers,  woods,  houses,  were  all  the 
scenery  used,  and  a  board,  stating  the  place  of  action, 
was  hung  out  from  the  top  when  the  scene  changed. 
Boys  acted  the  female  parts.  It  was  only  after  the 
Restoration  that  movable  scenery  and  actresses  were 
introduced.  No  "pencil's  aid"  supplied  the  landscape 
of  Shakespeare's  plays.  The  forest  of  Arden,  the  castle 
of  Macbeth,  were  "  seen  only  by  the  intellectual  eye." 

81.  The  Second   Stage    of   the  Drama  ranges   from 


rv  THE   ENGLISH    DRAMA  I3I 

1580  to  1596.  It  includes  the  plays  of  Lyly,  Peele, 
Greene,  Lodge,  Marlowe,  Kyd,  Nash,  and  the  earliest 
works  of  Shakespeare.  During  this  time  we  know  that 
more  than  100  different  plays  were  performed  by  four 
out  of  the  eleven  companies ;  so  swift  and  plentiful  was 
their  production.  They  were  written  in  prose,  and  in 
rhyme,  and  in  blank  verse  mixed  with  prose  and  rhyme. 
Prose  and  rhyme  prevailed  before  1587,  when  Marlowe 
in  his  play  of  Tamburlaine  made  blank  verse  so  new 
and  splendid  a  thing  that  it  overcame  all  other  dra- 
matic vehicles.  John  Lyly,  however,  wrote  so  much  of 
his  eight  plays  in  prose,  that  he  established,  we  may  say, 
the  use  of  prose  in  the  drama — an  innovation  which 
Gascoigne  introduced,  and  which  Shakespeare  carried 
to  perfection.  Some  beautiful  little  songs  scattered 
through  Lyly's  plays  are  the  forerunners  of  the  songs 
with  which  Shakespeare  and  his  fellows  illumined  their 
dramas,  and  the  witty  "quips  and  cranks,"  repartees 
and  similes  of  Lyly's  fantastic  prose  dialogue  were  the 
school  of  Shakespeare's  first  prose  dialogue.  Peele, 
Greene,  and  Marlowe,  the  three  important  names  of 
the  period,  belong  to  the  University  men.  So  do  Lodge 
and  Nash,  and  perhaps  Kyd.  They  are  the  first  in 
whose  hands  the  play  of  human  passion  and  action  is 
expressed  with  any  true  dramatic  effect.  George 
Peele's  Arraignment  of  Paris,  1584,  and  his  David 
and  Bethsabe  are  full  of  passages  of  new  and  delightful 
poetry,  and  when  the  poetry  is  good,  his  blank  verse 
and  his  heroic  couplet  are  smooth  and  tender.     Robert 


132  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Greene,  of  whose  prose  in  pamphlet  and  tale  much 
might  be  said,  spent  ten  years  in  writing,  and  died  in 
1592.  There  is  little  poetry  in  his  plays,  but  he  could 
write  a  charming  song.  Kyd's  best  play  is  the  Spanish 
Tragedy.  None  of  these  men  had  the  power  of  work- 
ing out  a  play  by  the  development  of  their  "  characters  " 
to  a  natural  conclusion.  They  anticipate  the  poetry, 
but  not  the  art,  of  Shakespeare.  Christopher  Marlowe 
as  dramatist  surpassed,  as  poet  rose  far  above,  them, 
and  as  metrist  is  almost  as  great  as  Shakespeare.  The 
difference  between  the  imequal  action  and  thought  of 
his  Doctor  Faustus,  and  the  quiet  and  orderly  progres- 
sion to  its  end  of  the  play  of  Edward  II.,  is  all  the  more 
remarkable  when  we  know  that  he  died  at  thirty.  As 
he  may  be  said  to  have  made  the  verse  of  the  drama,  so 
he  created  the  English  tragic  drama.  His  best  plays 
are  wrought  with  a  new  skill  to  their  end,  his  characters 
are  outlined  with  strength  and  developed  with  fire. 
Each  play  illustrates  one  ruling  passion,  in  its  growth, 
its  power,  and  its  extremes.  Tamburlaine  paints  the 
desire  of  universal  empire ;  the  Jew  of  Malta,  the  mar- 
ried passions  of  greed  and  hatred;  Doctor  Faustus,  the 
struggle  and  failure  of  man  to  possess  all  knowledge  and 
all  pleasure  without  toil  and  without  law ;  Edward II.,  the 
misery  of  weakness  and  the  agony  of  a  king's  ruin.  His 
knowledge  of  human  nature  was  neither  extensive  nor 
penetrative,  but  the  splendour  of  his  imagination,  and 
the  noble  surging  of  his  verse,  make  us  forget  his  want 
of  depth  and  of  variety.     Every  one  has  dwelt  on  his 


IV  THE   ENGLISH    DRAMA  1 33 

intemperance  in  phrases  and  of  images,  but  the  spirit  of 
poetry  moves  in  them ;  we  even  enjoy  the  natural  fauUs 
of  fiery  youth  in  a  fiery  time.  He  had  no  humour,  and 
his  farcical  fun  is  like  the  boisterous  play  of  a  clumsy 
animal.  In  nothing  is  the  difference  between  Shake- 
speare and  him  and  his  fellows  more  infinite  than  in  this 
point  of  humour.  And  indeed  he  had  little  pathos. 
His  sorrows  are  too  loud.  Nevertheless,  by  force  of 
poetry,  not  of  dramatic  art,  Marlowe  made  a  noble 
porch  to  the  temple  which  Shakespeare  built.  That  tem- 
ple, however,  in  spite  of  all  the  preceding  work,  seems  to 
spring  out  of  nothing,  so  astonishing  it  is  in  art,  in 
beauty,  in  conception.  He  himself  was  his  only  worthy 
predecessor,  and  the  third  stage  of  the  drama  includes 
his  work,  that  of  Ben  Jonson's,  and  of  a  few  others.  It 
is  the  work,  moreover,  not  of  University  men  who  did 
not  know  the  stage,  but  of  men  who  were  not  only  men 
of  genius,  but  also  playwrights  who  understood  what  a 
play  should  be,  and  how  it  was  to  be  staged. 

82.  William  Shakespeare  in  twenty-eight  years  made 
the  drama  represent  almost  the  whole  of  human  life.  He 
was  baptised  April  26,  1564,  and  was  the  son  of  a  com- 
fortable burgess  of  Stratford-on-Avon.  While  he  was 
still  young  his  father  fell  into  poverty,  and  an  interrupted 
education  left  him  an  inferior  scholar.  "  He  had  small 
Latin  and  less  Greek ; "  but  he  had  avast  store  of  English.^ 

1  He  uses  15,000  words,  and  he  wrote  pure  English.  Out  of  every 
five  verbs,  adverbs,  and  nouns  {e.g.  in  the  last  act  of  Othello),  four  are 
Teutonic ;  and  he  is  more  Teutonic  in  comedy  than  in  tragedy. 


134  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

However,  by  dint  of  genius  and  by  living  in  a  society 
in  which  every  kind  of  information  was  attainable,  he 
became  an  accomplished  man.  The  story  told  of  his 
deer-stealing  in  Charlecote  woods  is  without  proof,  but 
it  is  likely  that  his  youth  was  wild  and  passionate.  At 
nineteen  he  married  Anne  Hathaway,  more  than  seven 
years  older  than  himself,  and  was  probably  unhappy  with 
her.  For  this  reason,  or  from  poverty,  or  from  the  driv- 
ing of  the  genius  that  led  him  to  the  stage,  he  left  Strat- 
ford about  1586-7,  and  came  to  London  at  the  age  of 
twenty-two  years,  and  falling  in  with  Marlowe,  Greene, 
and  the  rest,  became  an  actor  and  playwright,  and  may 
have  lived  their  unrestrained  and  riotous  life  for  some 
years.  It  is  convenient  to  divide  his  work  into  periods, 
and  to  state  the  order  in  which  it  is  now  supposed  his 
plays  were  written.  But  we  must  not  imagine  that  the 
periods  and  the  order  are  really  settled.  We  know  some- 
thing, but  not  all  we  ought  to  know,  of  this  matter. 

83.  His  First  Period.  —  It  is  probable  that  before 
leaving  Stratford  he  had  sketched  a  part  at  least  of  his 
Venus  and  Adonis.  It  is  full  of  the  country  sights  and 
sounds,  of  the  ways  of  birds  and  animals,  such  as  he  saw 
when  wandering  in  Charlecote  woods.  Its  rich  and  over- 
laden poetry  and  its  warm  colouring  made  him,  when  it 
was  published,  1593,  at  once  the  favourite  of  men  like 
Lord  Southampton,  and  lifted  him  into  fame.  But  before 
that  date  he  had  done  work  for  the  stage  by  touching  up 
old  plays,  and  writing  new  ones.  We  seem  to  trace  his 
"  prentice  hand  "  in  some  dramas  of  the  time,  but  the 


IV  tHE  ENGLISH   DRAMA  13^ 

first  he  is  usually  thought  to  have  fully  retouched  is  Ti- 
tus Andronicus,  and  some  time  after  the  First  Part  of 
Henry  VI.  Lovers  Labour'' s  Lost,  supposed  to  be  written 
1589  or  1590,  the  first  of  his  original  plays,  in  which  he 
quizzed  and  excelled  the  Euphuists  in  wit,  was  followed 
by  the  involved  and  rapid  farce  of  the  Comedy  of  Errors. 
Out  of  these  frolics  of  intellect  and  action  he  passed 
into  pure  poetry  in  the  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream,  and 
mingled  into  fantastic  beauty  the  classic  legend,  the 
mediaeval  fairyland,  and  the  clownish  life  of  the  English 
mechanic.  Italian  story  laid  its  charm  upon  him  about 
the  same  time,  and  the  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  pre- 
ceded the  southern  glow  of  passion  in  Romeo  and  Juliet, 
in  which  he  first  reached  tragic  power.  They  are  said  to 
complete,  with  Lovers  Labour's  Won,  afterwards  recast  as 
AlVs  Well  that  Ends  Well,  the  love  plays  of  his  early 
period.  We  should  read  along  with  them,  as  belonging 
to  the  same  period,  the  Rape  of  Lucrece,  a  poem  finally 
printed  in  1594,  one  year  later  than  the  Venus  and  Ado- 
nis, which  was  probably  finished,  if  not  wholly  written, 
at  this  passionate  time. 

The  same  poetic  succession  we  have  traced  in  the  poets, 
is  now  found  in  Shakespeare.  The  patriotic  feeling  of 
England,  also  represented  in  Marlowe  and  Peele,  had 
seized  on  him,  and  he  began  his  great  series  of  historical 
plays  with  Richard  IL  and  Richard  III.  To  introduce 
Richard  III.  or  to  complete  the  subject,  he  recast  the 
Second  and  Third  Parts  of  Henry  VI,  and  ended  what 
we  have  called  his  first  period  by  King  John  about  1596, 


136  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

84.  His  Second  Period,  1596-1601. —  In  the  Merchant 
of  Venice  Shakespeare  reached  entire  mastery  over  his 
art.  A  mingled  woof  of  tragic  and  comic  threads  is 
brought  to  its  highest  point  of  colour  when  Portia  and 
Shylock  meet  in  court.  Pure  comedy  followed  in  his 
retouch  of  the  old  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  and  all  the  wit 
of  the  world  mixed  with  noble  history  met  in  the  first  and 
SQCond.  Henry  IV.,  1597-8;  while  Falstaff  was  continued 
in  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor.  The  historical  plays 
were  then  closed  with  Henry  V.,  1599;  a  splendid  dra- 
matic song  to  the  glory  of  England.  The  Globe  Theatre 
of  which  he  was  one  of  the  proprietors,  was  built  in  1599. 
In  the  comedies  he  wrote  for  it,  Shakespeare  turned  to 
Write  of  love  again,  not  to  touch  its  deeper  passion  as 
before,  but  to  play  with  it  in  all  its  lighter  phases.  The 
flashing  dialogue  of  Much  Ado  About  Nothing  was  fol- 
lowed by  the  far-off  forest  world  oi  As  You  Like  It,  1599, 
where  "the  time  fleets  carelessly,"  and  Rosalind's  char- 
acter is  the  play.  Amid  all  its  gracious  lightness  steals  in 
a  new  element,  and  the  melancholy  of  Jaques  is  the  first 
touch  we  have  of  the  older  Shakespeare  who  had  "  gained 
his  experience,  and  whose  experience  had  made  him 
sad."  As  yet  it  was  but  a  touch ;  Twelfth  Night  shows 
no  trace  of  it,  though  the  play  that  followed,  AlVs  Well 
that  Ends  Well,  1601?  again  strikes  a  sadder  note.  We 
find  this  sadness  fully  grown  in  the  later  Sonnets,  which 
are  said  to  have  been  finished  about  1602.  We  know 
that  some  of  the  Sonnets  existed  in  1598,  but  they  were 
all  printed  together   for  the   first  time  in  1609.     They 


IV  THE   ENGLISH   DRAMA  1 37 

form  together  the  most  deep,  ardent,  subtle,  and  varied 
representation  of  love  in  our  language,  and  their  emotion 
is  mingled  with  so  great  a  wealth  of  simple  and  complex 
thought  that  they  seem  to  be  written  out  of  the  experi- 
ence, not  of  one  but  of  many  men. 

Shakespeare's  life  changed  now,  and  his  mind  changed 
with  it.  He  had  grown  wealthy  during  this  period, 
famous,  and  loved  by  society.  He  was  the  friend  of  the 
Earls  of  Southampton  and  Essex,  and  of  William  Herbert, 
Lord  Pembroke.  The  queen  patronised  him;  all  the 
best  Uterary  society  was  his  own.  He  had  rescued  his 
father  from  poverty,  bought  the  best  house  in  Stratford 
and  much  land,  and  was  a  man  of  wealth  and  comfort. 
Suddenly  all  his  life  seems  to  have  grown  dark.  His 
best  friends  fell  into  ruin,  Essex  perished  on  the  scaffold, 
Southampton  went  to  the  Tower,  Pembroke  was  banished 
from  the  court ;  he  may  himself,  some  have  thought,  have 
been  slightly  involved  in  the  rising  of  Essex.  Added  to 
this,  we  may  conjecture,  from  the  imaginative  pageantry 
of  the  sonnets,  that  he  had  xmwisely  loved,  and  been 
betrayed  in  his  love  by  a  dear  friend.  Public  and  pri- 
vate ill  then  weighed  heavily  upon  him;  he  seems  to 
even  have  had  disgust  for  his  profession  as  an  actor; 
and  in  darkness  of  spirit,  though  still  clinging  to  the 
business  of  the  theatre,  he  passed  from  comedy  to  write 
of  the  sterner  side  of  the  world,  to  tell  the  tragedy  of 
mankind. 

85.  His  Third  Period,  1601-1608,  begins  with  the 
last  days  of  Queen   Elizabeth.     It  opens  with  Julius 


138  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CttAR 

CcBsar^  and  we  may  have,  scattered  through  the  telling 
of  the  great  Roman's  fate,  the  expression  of  Shake- 
speare's sorrow  for  the  ruin  of  Essex.  Hamlet  followed, 
1601-3?  for  the  poet  felt,  like  the  Prince  of  Denmark, 
that  "the  time  was  out  of  joint."  Hamlet,  the  dreamer, 
may  well  represent  Shakespeare  as  he  stood  aside  from 
the  crash  that  overwhelmed  his  friends,  and  thought  on 
the  changing  world.  The  tragi-comedy  of  Measure  for 
Measure,  1 603  ?  may  have  now  been  written,  and  is  tragic 
in  thought  throughout.  Othello,  1604,  Macbeth,  Lear, 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  Coriolanus, 
1608?  Timon  (only  in  part  his  own),  were  all  written  in 
these  five  years.  The  darker  sins  of  men ;  the  unpitying 
fate  which  slowly  gathers  round  and  falls  on  mistakes 
and  crimes,  on  ambition,  luxury,  and  pride ;  the  aveng- 
ing wrath  of  conscience ;  the  cruelty  and  punishment  of 
weakness ;  the  treachery,  lust,  jealousy,  ingratitude,  mad- 
ness of  men ;  the  follies  of  the  great  and  the  fickleness 
of  the  mob,  are  all,  with  a  thousand  other  varying 
moods  and  passions,  painted,  and  felt  as  his  own  while 
he  painted  them,  during  this  stern  time. 

86.  His  Fourth  Period,  1608-1613.  —  As  Shakespeare 
wrote  of  these  things  he  passed  out  of  them,  and  his  last 
days  are  full  of  the  gentle  and  loving  calm  of  one  who 
has  known  sin  and  sorrow  and  fate,  but  has  risen  above 
them  into  peaceful  victory.  Like  his  great  contemporary 
Bacon,  he  left  the  world  and  his  own  evil  time  behind 
him,  and  with  the  same  quiet  dignity  sought  the  inno- 
cence and  stillness  of  country  life.    The  country  breathes 


IV  THE   ENGLISH   DRAMA  1 39 

through  all  the  dramas  of  this  time.  The  flowers  Perdita 
gathers  in  Winter's  Tale,  the  frolic  of  the  sheep-shear- 
ing, he  may  have  seen  in  the  Stratford  meadows;  the 
song  of  Fidele  in  Cymbeline  is  written  by  one  who  already 
feared  no  more  the  frown  of  the  great,  nor  slander,  nor 
censure  rash,  and  was  looking  forward  to  the  time  when 
men  should  say  of  him  — 

Quiet  consummation  have ; 
And  renowned  be  thy  grave  1 

Shakespeare  probably  left  London  in  1609,  and  lived  in 
the  house  he  had  bought  at  Stratford-on-Avon.  He  was 
reconciled,  it  is  said,  to  his  wife,  and  the  plays  now  writ- 
ten dwell  on  domestic  peace  and  forgiveness.  The  story 
of  Marina,  which  he  left  unfinished,  and  which  it  is 
supposed  two  later  writers  expanded  into  the  play  of 
Pericles,  is  the  first  of  his  closing  series  of  dramas. 
Cymbeline,  1609?  The  Tempest,  1610?  Winter's  Tale, 
bring  his  history  up  to  161 1,  and  in  the  next  year  he 
may  have  closed  his  poetic  life  by  writing,  with  Fletcher, 
Henry  VIII.,  1 6 1 2  ?  The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen  of  Fletcher, 
part  of  which  is  attributed  to  Shakespeare,  and  in  which 
the  poet  sought  the  inspiration  of  Chaucer,  would  belong 
to  this  period.  For  some  three  years  he  kept  silence, 
and  then,  on  the  23d  of  April,  1 616,  it  is  supposed  on 
his  fifty-second  birthday,  he  died. 

87.  His  Work. — We  can  only  guess  with  regard  to 
Shakespeare's  life  and  character.  It  has  been  tried  to 
find  out  what  he  was  from  his  sonnets,  and  firora  his  plays, 


f40  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHA>. 

but  every  attempt  seems  to  be  a  failure.  We  cannot  lay 
our  hand  on  anything  and  say  for  certain  that  it  was 
spoken  by  Shakespeare  out  of  his  own  personality.  He 
created  men  and  women  whose  dramatic  action  on  each 
other,  and  towards  a  chosen  end,  was  intended  to  please 
the  public,  not  to  reveal  himself.  Frequently  failing  in 
fineness  of  workmanship,  having,  but  far  less  than  the 
other  dramatists,  the  faults  of  the  art  of  his  time,  he  was 
yet  in  all  other  points — in  creative  power,  in  impassioned 
conception  and  execution,  in  truth  to  universal  human 
nature,  in  intellectual  power,  in  intensity  of  feeling,  in 
the  great  matter  and  manner  of  his  poetry,  in  the  weld- 
ing together  of  thought,  passion,  and  action,  in  range,  in 
plenteousness,  in  the  continuance  of  his  romantic  feeling 
—  the  greatest  poet  our  modern  world  has  known.  Like 
the  rest  of  the  greater  poets,  he  reflected  the  noble  things 
of  his  time,  but  refused  to  reflect  the  base.  Fully  in- 
fluenced, as  we  see  in  Hamlet  he  was,  by  the  graver  and 
more  philosophic  cast  of  thought  of  the  latter  time  of 
Elizabeth ;  passing  on  into  the  reign  of  James  I.,  when 
pedantry  took  the  place  of  gaiety,  and  sensual  the  place 
of  imaginative  love  in  the  drama,  and  artificial  art  the 
place  of  that  art  which  itself  is  nature ;  he  preserves  to 
the  last  the  natural  passion,  the  simple  tenderness,  the 
sweetness,  grace,  and  fire  of  the  youthful  Elizabethan 
poetry.  The  Winter's  Tale  is  as  lovely  a  love-story  as 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  the  Tempest  is  more  instinct  with  im- 
agination and  as  great  in  fancy  as  the  Midsummer  Nighfs 
Dream,  and  yet  there  are  fiilly  twenty  years  between 


ly  THE   ENGLISH    DRAMA  I4I 

them.  The  only  change  is  in  the  increase  of  power  and 
in  a  closer,  graver,  and  more  ideal  grasp  of  human  nature. 
In  the  unchangeableness  of  this  joyful  and  creative  art- 
power  Shakespeare  is  almost  alone.  It  is  true  that  in 
these  last  plays  his  art  is  more  self-conscious,  less  natu- 
ral, and  the  greater  glory  is  therefore  lost,  but  the  power 
is  not  less  nor  the  beauty. 

88.  The  Decline  of  the  Drama  begins  while  Shake- 
speare is  alive.  At  first  we  can  scarcely  call  it  decline, 
it  was  so  superb  in  its  own  qualities.  For  it  began 
with  "rare  Ben  Jonson."  With  him  are  connected 
by  associated  work,  by  quarrels,  and  by  date,  Dekker, 
Marston,  and  Chapman.  They  belong  with  Shakespeare 
to  the  days  of  Elizabeth  and  the  days  of  James  I.  Ben 
Jonson's  first  play,  in  its  very  title.  Every  Man  in  his 
Humour,  1596,  enables  us  to  say  in  what  the  first  step 
of  this  decHne  consisted.  The  drama  in  Shakespeare's 
hands  had  been  the  painting  of  the  whole  of  human 
nature,  the  painting  of  characters  as  they  were  built  up 
by  their  natural  bent,  and  by  the  play  of  circumstance 
upon  them.  The  drama,  in  Ben  Jonson's  hands,  was 
the  painting  of  particular  phases  of  human  nature,  espe- 
cially of  his  own  age ;  and  his  characters  are  men  and 
women  as  they  may  become  when  they  are  completely 
mastered  by  a  special  bias  of  the  mind  or  Humour. 
"The  Manners,  now  called  Humours,  feed  the  stage," 
says  Jonson  himself.  Every  Man  in  his  Humour  was 
followed  by  Every  Man  out  of  his  Humour,  and  by 
Cynthia^ s  Revels,  written  to  satirise  the  courtiers.     The 


142  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

fierce  satire  of  these  plays  brought  the  town  down  upon 
him,  and  he  replied  to  their  "  noise  "  in  the  Poetaster, 
in  which  Dekker  and  Marston  were  satirised.  Dekker 
answered  with  the  Satiro-Mastix,  a  bitter  parody  on 
the  Poetaster,  in  which  he  did  not  spare  Jonson's  bodily 
defects.  Silent  then  for  two  years,  he  reappeared  with 
the  tragedy  of  Sejanus,  and  then  quickly  produced 
three  splendid  comedies  in  James  I.'s  reign,  Volpone  the 
Fox,  the  Silent  Woman,  and  the  Alchemist,  1 605-9-10. 
The  first  is  the  finest  thing  he  ever  did,  as  great  in 
power  as  it  is  in  the  interest  and  skill  of  its  plot ;  the 
second  is  chiefly  valuable  as  a  picture  of  English  life 
in  high  society;  the  third  is  full  of  Jonson's  obscure 
learning,  but  its  character  of  Sir  Epicure  Mammon  is 
done  with  Jonson's  keenest  power.  In  161 1  his  Catiline 
appeared,  and  then  Bartholomew  Fair.  Eight  years 
after  he  was  made  Poet  Laureate.  Soon  he  became 
poor  and  palsy-stricken,  but  his  genius  did  not  decay. 
His  tender  and  imaginative  pastoral  drama,  the  Sad 
Shepherd,  proves  that,  like  Shakespeare,  Jonson  grew 
gentler  as  he  grew  near  to  death,  and  death  took  him 
in  1637.  He  was  a  great  man.  The  power  and  copi- 
ousness of  the  young  Elizabethan  age  belonged  to  him ; 
and  he  stands  far  below,  for  he  had  nu  passion,  but 
still  worthily  by,  Shakespeare,  "  a  robust,  surly,  and  ob- 
serving dramatist."  Thos.  Dekker,  whose  lovely  lyrics 
are  well  known,  and  whose  copious  prose  occupies  five 
volumes,  "  had  poetry  enough,"  Lamb  said,  "  for  any- 
thing."    His  light  comedies  of  manners  are  excellent 


Vr  THE   ENGLISH    DRAMA  I43 

pictures  of  the  time.  But  his  romantic  poetry  is  better 
felt  in  such  dramas  as  Patient  Grissil,  Old  Fortunatus, 
and  The  Witch  of  Edmonton,  in  which,  though  others 
worked  them  along  with  Dekker,  the  women  are  all  his 
own  by  tenderness,  grace,  subtlety,  and  pathos.  John 
Marston,  whose  chief  plays  were  written  between  1602 
and  1605,  needs  little  notice  here.  He  is  best  known 
by  certain  noble  and  beautiful  passages,  and  his  finest 
plays  were  Antonio  and  Mellida  and  the  Malcontent. 
Of  the  three  Geo.  Chapman  was  the  most  various  genius, 
and  the  most  powerful.  He  illuminated  the  age  of 
Elizabeth  by  the  first  part  of  his  translation  of  Homer ; 
he  lived  on  into  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  His  poems 
(of  which  the  best  are  his  continuation  of  Marlowe's 
Hero  and  Leander,  and  The  Tears  of  Peace)  are  ex- 
treme examples  of  the  gnarled,  sensuous,  formless,  and 
obscure  poetry  of  which  Dryden  cured  our  literature. 
His  plays  are  of  a  finer  quality,  especially  the  five 
tragedies  taken  from  French  history.  They  are  weighty 
with  thought,  but  the  thought  devours  their  action,  and 
they  are  difficult  and  sensational.  Inequality  pervades 
them.  His  mingling  of  intellectual  violence  with  intel- 
lectual imagination,  of  obscurity  with  a  noble  exultation 
and  clearness  of  poetry,  is  a  strange  compound  of  the 
earlier  and  later  Elizabethans.  He,  like  Marlowe,  but 
with  less  of  beauty,  "hurled  instructive  fire  about  the 
world."  With  these  three  I  may  mention  Cyril  Tourneur 
and  John  Day,  the  one  as  ferocious  in  the  Atheisfs  Trag- 
edy as  the  other  was  graceful  in  his  Parliament  of  Bees, 


144  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Both  were  poets,  and  both  were  more  truly  Elizabethan 
than  Beaumont,  Fletcher,  or  Webster. 

89.  Masques.  —  Rugged  as  Jonson  was,  he  could  turn 
to  light  and  graceful  work,  and  it  is  with  his  name  that 
we  connect  the  Masques.  He  wrote  them  delightfully. 
Masques  were  dramatic  representations  made  for  a  fes- 
tive occasion,  with  a  reference  to  the  persons  present 
and  the  occasion.  Their  personages  were  allegorical. 
They  adniitted  of  dialogue,  music,  singing,  and  dancing, 
combined  by  the  use  of  some  ingenious  fable  into  a 
whole.  They  were  made  and  performed  for  the  court 
and  the  houses  of  the  nobles,  and  the  scenery  was  as 
gorgeous  and  varied  as  the  scenery  of  the  playhouse 
proper  was  poor  and  unchanging.  Arriving  for  the  first 
time  at  any  repute  in  Henry  VIH.'s  time,  they  reached 
splendour  under  James  and  Charles  I.  Great  men  took 
part  in  them.  When  Ben  Jonson  wrote  them,  Inigo 
Jones  made  the  scenery  and  Lawes  the  music ;  and 
Lord  Bacon,  Whitelock,  and  Selden  sat  in  committee 
for  the  last  great  masque  presented  to  Charles.  Milton 
himself  made  them  worthier  by  writing  Comus,  and  their 
scenic  decoration  was  soon  introduced  into  the  regular 
theatres. 

90.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  worked  together,  and  be- 
long not  only  in  date,  but  in  spirit,  to  the  reign  of  James. 
In  two  plays,  Henry  VIII.  and  The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen, 
Fletcher  has  been  linked  to  Shakespeare.  With  Beau- 
mont as  fellow-worker  and  counsellor,  he  wrote  about 
a  third   of  the  more  than   fifty  plays  which   go  under 


ir  THE   ENGLISH   DRAMA  I45 

their  names.  Beaumont  died,  aged  thirty,  in  16 16, 
Fletcher,  aged  fifty,  in  1625.  The  creative  power  of 
the  Elizabethan  time  has  no  more  striking  example 
than  in  their  vast  production.  The  inventiveness  of 
the  plays  is  astonishing,  and  their  plots  are  almost 
always  easily  connected  and  well  supported.  Far  the 
greater  part  of  the  work  was  done  by  Fletcher,  but  it 
has  been  tried  to  trace  Beaumont's  hand  chiefly  in  such 
fine  tragedies  as  The  Maid's  Tragedy  and  Philaster. 
In  comedy  Fletcher  is  gay,  and  quick,  and  interesting. 
In  tragedy  and  comedy  alike,  his  level  of  goodness  is 
equal,  but  then  we  have  none  of  those  magnificent  out- 
bursts of  imaginative  passion  to  which,  up  to  this  time, 
we  have  been  accustomed.  The  Faithful  Shepherdess 
of  Fletcher  is  a  lovely  pastoral,  and  the  lyrics  which 
diversify  his  plays  have  even  some  of  the  charm  of 
Shakespeare. 

He  and  his  fellows  represent  a  distinct  change,  and 
not  for  the  better,  in  the  drama  —  a  kind  of  fourth 
stage.  Its  poetry  is  on  the  whole  less  masculine.  Its 
blank  verse  is  rendered  smoother  and  sweeter  by  the 
incessant  addition  of  an  eleventh  syllable,  but  it  is  also 
enfeebled.  This  weak  ending,  by  the  additional  free- 
dom and  elasticity  it  gave  to  the  verse,  was  suited  to 
the  rapid  dialogue  of  comedy,  but  the  dignity  of  trag- 
edy was  lowered  by  it.  The  change  is  also  seen  in 
other  matters.  In  the  previous  plays  moral  justice  is 
done.  The  good  are  divided  from  the  bad.  Fletcher 
seems  quite  indifferent  to  this.     In  the  previous  plays, 


146  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

men  and  women,  save  in  Shakespeare,  are  coarse  and 
foul  enough  at  times,  but  they  are  so  by  nature  or 
under  furious  passion.  In  Fletcher,  there  is  a  natural 
indecency,  an  every-day  foulness  of  thought,  which  be- 
longs to  the  good  and  the  bad  alike.  The  women  are, 
when  good,  beyond  nature,  and,  when  bad,  below  it. 
The  situations  invented  tend  to  be  studiously  out  of  the 
way,  beyond  the  natural  aspects  of  humanity.  The  aim 
of  art  has  changed  for  the  worse.  It  strives  for  the 
strange  and  the  sensational.  Even  John  Webster  lost 
some  of  the  power  his  genius  gave  him  by  the  ghastly 
situations  he  chose  to  dwell  upon.  Yet  he  all  but  re- 
deemed the  worst  of  them  by  the  intensity  of  his  imag- 
ination, and  by  the  soul-piercing  power  with  which,  in 
a  few  words,  he  sounds  the  depths  of  the  human  heart 
when  it  is  wrought  bv  remorse,  by  sorrow,  by  fear,  or 
by  wrath  to  its  greatest  point  of  passion.  Moreover, 
in  his  worst  characters  there  is  some  redeeming  touch, 
and  this  poetic  pity  saves  his  sensationalism  from  weari- 
ness, and  brings  him  nearer  to  Shakespeare  than  others 
of  his  time.  His  two  greatest  plays,  things  which  will 
be  glorious  forever  in  poetry,  are  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi,  acted  in  16 16,  and  the  White  Devil,  Vittoria 
Corrombona,  printed  in  161 2.  One  other  play  of  the 
time  is  held  to  approach  them  in  poetic  quaUty,  The 
Changelingy  by  Thomas  Middleton,  but  it  does  so  only 
in  parts. 

91.   Decay  of  the  Drama.  — In  the  next  dramatists,  in 
the  followers,  if  I  may  thus   class   them,  of  Massinger 


Vr  THE   ENGLISH    DRAMA  I47 

and  Ford,  the  change  for  the  worse  in  the  drama  is 
more  marked  than  in  the  work  of  those  of  whom  we 
have  been  speaking.  The  poetic  and  creative  qualities 
are  both  less,  the  sensationalism  is  greater,  the  foulness 
of  language  increases,  the  situations  are  more  out  of 
nature,  the  verse  is  clumsier  and  more  careless,  the 
composition  and  connexion  of  the  plots  are  tumbled 
and  confused.  But  these  statements  are  only  moder- 
ately true  of  Massinger  and  Ford.  They  stand  at  the 
head  of  the  rapid  decay  of  the  drama,  but  they  still 
retain  a  predominant  part  of  that  which  made  the 
Elizabethans  great.  Massinger's  first  dated  play  was 
the  Virgin  Martyr,  1620.  He  lived  poor,  and  died 
"a  stranger,"  in  1639.  In  these  twenty  years  he  wrote 
thirty-seven  plays,  of  which  the  New  Way  to  Pay  Old 
Debts  is  the  best  known  by  its  character  of  Sir  Giles 
Overreach.  His  versification  and  language  are  flexible 
and  strong,  "and  seem  to  rise  out  of  the  passions  he 
describes."  He  speaks  the  tongue  of  real  life.  He  is 
greater  than  he  seems  to  be.  Like  Fletcher,  there  is 
a  steady  equality  in  his  work.  Coarse,  even  foul  as  he 
is  in  speech,  he  is  the  most  moral  of  the  secondary 
dramatists.  Nowhere  is  his  work  so  forcible  as  when 
he  represents  the  brave  man  struggling  through  trial  to 
victory,  the  pure  woman  suffering  for  the  sake  of  truth 
and  love;  or  when  he  describes  the  terrors  that  con- 
science brings  on  injustice  and  cruelty.  John  Ford, 
his  contemporary,  published  his  first  play,  the  Lover's 
Melancholy,  in  1629,  and  five  years  after,  Ferkin  War' 


148  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP, 

beck,  one  of  the  best  historical  dramas  after  Shake- 
speare. Between  these  dates  appeared  others,  of  which 
the  best  are  the  Broken  Heart  and  *Tis  Pity  She^s  a 
Whore.  He  carried  to  an  extreme  the  tendency  of  the 
drama  to  unnatural  and  horrible  subjects,  but  he  did  so 
with  great  power.  He  has  no  comic  humour,  but  few 
men  have  described  better  the  worn  and  tortured  hu- 
man heart.  A  crowd  of  dramatists  carried  on  the  pro- 
duction of  plays  till  the  Commonwealth.  Some  names 
alone  we  can  mention  here  —  Thomas  Heywood,  Henry 
Glapthome,  Richard  Broome,  William  Rowley,  Thomas 
Randolph,  Nabbes,  and  Davenport.  Of  these  "all  of 
whom,"  says  Lamb,  "  spoke  nearly  the  same  language, 
and  had  a  set  of  moral  feelings  and  notions  in  com- 
mon," James  Shirley  is  the  best  and  last.  He  lived 
till  1666.  In  him  the  fire  and  passion  of  the  old  time 
pass  away,  but  some  of  the  delicate  poetry  remains,  and 
in  him  the  Elizabethan  drama  dies.  Sir  John  Suckling 
and  Davenant,  who  wrote  plays  before  the  Common- 
wealth, can  scarcely  be  called  even  decadent  Eliza- 
bethans. In  1642  the  theatres  were  closed  during  the 
calamitous  times  of  the  Civil  War.  Strolling  players 
managed  to  exist  with  difficulty,  and  against  the  law, 
till  1656,  when  Sir  WiUiam  Davenant  had  his  opera 
of  the  Siege  of  Rhodes  acted  in  London.  It  was  the 
beginning  of  a  new  drama,  in  every  point  but  impurity 
different  from  the  old,  and  four  years  after,  at  the  Res- 
toration, it  broke  loose  from  the  prison  of  Puritanism  to 
indulge  in  a  shameless  license. 


sr  THE  ENGLISH   DRAMA  I49 

In  this  rapid  sketch  of  the  drama  in  England  we 
have  been  carried  on  beyond  the  death  of  Elizabeth 
to  the  date  of  the  Restoration.  It  was  necessary,  be- 
cause it  keeps  the  whole  story  together.  We  now  re- 
turn to  the  time  that  followed  the  accession  of  James  I. 


150  ENGLISH  LITERATURE  CHAP. 


CHAPTER  V 

FROM  Elizabeth's  death  to  the  restoration, 
1603-1660 

92.  The  Literature  of  this  Period  may  fairly  be 
called  Elizabethan,  but  not  so  altogether.  The  prose 
retained  the  manner  of  the  Elizabethan  time  and  the 
faults  of  its  style,  but  gradually  grew  into  greater  ex- 
cellence, spread  itself  over  larger  fields  of  thought,  and 
took  up  a  greater  variety  of  subjects.  The  poetry,  on 
the  whole,  declined.  It  exaggerated  the  vices  of  the 
Elizabethan  art,  and  lessened  its  virtues.  But  this  is 
not  the  whole  account  of  the  matter.  We  must  add 
that  a  new  prose,  of  greater  force  of  thought  and  of  a 
simpler  style  than  the  EHzabethan,  arose  in  the  writings 
of  a  theologian  like  Chillingworth,  an  historian  like 
Clarendon,  and  a  philosopher  like  Hobbes :  and  that 
a  new  type  of  poetry,  distinct  from  the  poetry  of  fan- 
tastic wit  into  which  Elizabethan  poetry  had  descended, 
was  written  by  some  of  the  lyrical  writers.  It  was  Eliza- 
bethan in  its  lyric  note,  but  it  was  not  obscure.  It  had 
grace,  simplicity,  and  smoothness.  In  its  greater  art  and 
clearness  it  tells  us  that  the  critical  school  is  at  hand. 


V  ELIZABETH   TO   THE    RESTORATION  I5I 

93.  Prose  Literature.  James  I.  — The  greatest  prose 
triumph  of  this  time  was  the  Authorised  Version  of  the 
Bible.  There  is  no  need  to  dwell  on  it,  nor  on  all  it  has 
done  for  the  literature  of  England.  It  lives  in  almost 
every  book  of  worth  and  imagination,  and  its  style,  es- 
pecially when  the  subject  soars,  is  inspired  by  the  spirits 
of  fitness  and  beauty  and  melody.  Philosophy  passed 
from  Elizabeth  into  the  reign  of  James  I.  with  Francis 
Bacon.  The  splendour  of  the  form  and  of  the  English 
prose  of  the  Advancement  of  Learning,  two  books  of 
which  were  published  in  1605,  raises  it  into  the  realm 
of  pure  literature,  fit  was  expanded  into  nine  Latin 
books  in  1623,  and  with  the  Novum  Organon,  finished 
in  1620,  and  the  Historia  Naturalis  et  Experimentalis, 
1622,  formed  the  Instauratio  Magna.  The  impulse 
these  books  gave  to  research,  and  to  the  true  method 
of  research,  awoke  scientific  inquiry  in  England;  and 
before  the  Royal  Society  was  constituted  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  II.,  our  science,  though  far  behind  that  of  the 
Continent,  had  done  some  good  work.  William  Harvey 
lectured  on  the  circulation  of  the  blood  in  1615,  and 
during  the  Civil  War  and  the  Commonwealth  men  like 
Robert  Boyle,  the  chemist,  John  Wallis,  the  mathe- 
matician, and  others,  met  in  William  Petty's  rooms  at 
Brazenose,  and  prepared  the  way  for  Newton. 

94.  History,  except  in  the  publication  of  the  earlier 
Chronicles  of  Archbishop  Parker,  does  not  appear  in 
the  later  part  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  but  under  James  I. 
Camden,  Spelman,  Selden,  and  Speed  continued  the  anti- 


152  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

quarian  researches  of  Stow  and  Grafton.  Bacon  wrote 
a  dignified  History  of  Henry  VH,  and  Daniel  the  poet, 
in  his  History  of  England  to  the  Time  of  Edward  HI., 
1 6 13-18,  was  one  of  the  first  to  throw  history  into  such  a 
literary  form  as  to  make  it  popular.  Knolles's  History 
of  the  Turks,  1603,  and  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  vast 
sketch  of  the  History  of  the  World,  show  how  for  the 
first  time  history  spread  itself  beyond  English  interests. 
Raleigh's  book,  written  in  the  peaceful  evening  of  a 
stormy  life,  and  in  the  quiet  of  his  prison,  is  not  only 
literary  from  the  impulsive  passages  which  adorn  it,  but 
from  its  still  spirit  of  melancholy  thought.  In  16 14, 
John  Selden's  Titles  of  Honour  added  to  the  accurate 
work  he  had  done  in  Latin  on  the  English  Records, 
and  his  History  of  Tithes  was  written  with  the  same 
careful  regard  for  truth  in  16 18. 

95 .  Miscellaneous  Literature.  —  The  pleasure  of  Travel, 
still  lingering  among  us  from  Elizabeth's  reign,  found  a 
quaint  voice  in  Thomas  Coryat's  Crudities,  which,  in 
161 1,  describes  his  journey  through  France  and  Italy; 
and  in  George  Sandys'  book,  161 5,  which  tells  his 
journey  in  the  East ;  while  Henry  Wotton's  Letters  from 
Italy  are  pleasant  reading.  The  care  with  which  Samuel 
Purchas  embodied  (1613)  in  Purchas  his  Pilgrimage 
("  his  own  in  matter,  though  borrowed  ")  and  in  Hak- 
luyfs  Posthumus,  or  Purchas  his  Pilgrimes  (1625),  the 
great  deeds,  sea  voyages,  and  land  travels  of  adventurers, 
brings  us  back  to  the  time  when  England  went  out  to 
win  the  world.      The  painting  of  short  "Characters" 


V  ELIZABETH   TO   THE    RESTORATION  1 53 

was  begun  by  Sir  Thomas  Overbury's  book  in  16 14,  and 
carried  on  in  the  following  reign  by  John  Earle  and 
Joseph  Hall,  who  became  bishops.  This  kind  of  litera- 
ture marks  the  interest  in  individual  life  which  now  began 
to  arise,  and  which  soon  took  form  in  Biography. 

96.  In  the  Caroline  Period  and  the  Commonwealth, 
Prose  grew  into  a  nearer  approach  to  the  finished  in- 
strument it  became  after  the  Restoration.  History  was 
illuminated,  and  its  style  dignified,  by  the  work  of  Claren- 
don—  the  History  of  the  Rebellion  (begun  in  1641)  and 
his  own  Life.  Thomas  May  wrote  the  History  of  the 
Parliament  of  1640,  a  book  with  a  purpose.  Thomas 
Fuller's  Church  History  of  Britain,  1656,  may  in  style 
and  temper  be  put  alongside  of  his  Worthies  of  England 
in  1662. 

In  Theology  and  Philosophy  the  masters  of  prose  at 
this  time  were  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Thomas  Hobbes.  It 
is  a  comfort  amidst  the  noisy  war  of  party  to  breathe  the 
calm  spiritual  air  of  The  Great  Exemplar  and  the  Holy 
Living  and  Dying  which  Taylor  published  at  the  close 
of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  They  had  been  preceded  in 
1647  by  the  Liberty  of  Prophesying,  in  which,  agreeing 
with  his  contemporaries,  John  Hales  and  William  Chil- 
lingworth,  he  pleaded  the  cause  of  religious  toleration, 
and  of  rightness  of  life  as  more  important  than  correct 
theology.  Taylor  was  the  most  eloquent  of  men,  and 
the  most  facile  of  orators.  Laden  with  thought,  his 
books  are  read  for  their  sweet  and  deep  devotion  (a 
quality  which  also  belonged  to  his  fellow-writer,  Lancelot 


154  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Andrewes),  even  more  than  for  their  impassioned  and 
convoluted  outbreaks  of  beautiful  words.  On  the  Puritan 
side,  the  fine  sermons  of  Richard  Sibbes  converted  Rich- 
ard Baxter,  whose  manifold  literary  work  only  ended  in 
the  reign  of  James  II.  One  little  thing  of  his,  written 
at  the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  became  a  household  book 
in  England.  There  used  to  be  few  cottages  which  did 
not  possess  a  copy  of  the  Saints'  Everlasting  Rest.  The 
best  work  of  Hobbes  belonged  to  Charles  I.  and  the 
Commonwealth,  but  will  better  be  noticed  hereafter. 
The  other  great  prose  writer  is  one  of  a  number  of 
men  whose  productions  may  be  classed  under  the  title 
of  Miscellaneous  Literature.  He  is  Sir  Thomas  Browne, 
who,  bom  in  1605,  died  in  1682.  In  1642  his  Religio 
Medici  was  printed,  and  the  book  ran  over  Europe. 
The  Enquiry  into  Vulgar  Errors  followed  in  1646,  and 
the  Hydriotaphia,  or  Urn- Burial,  in  1658.  These  books, 
with  other  happy  things  of  his,  have  by  their  quaintness, 
their  fancy,  and  their  special  charm  always  pleased  the 
world,  and  often  kindled  weary  prose  into  fresh  produc- 
tion. We  may  class  with  them  Robert  Burton's  Anatomy 
of  Melancholy,  a  book  of  inventive  wit  and  scattered  learn- 
ing, and  Thomas  Fuller's  Holy  and  Profane  State  and 
Worthies  of  England,  in  which  gaiety  and  piety,  good 
sense  and  whimsical  fancy  meet.  This  kind  of  writing 
was  greatly  increased  by  the  setting  up  of  libraries, 
where  men  dipped  into  every  kind  of  literature.  It 
was  in  James  I.'s  reign  that  Sir  Thomas  Bodley  estab- 
lished the  Bodleian  at  Oxford,  and  Sir  Robert  Cotton 


V  ELIZABETH    TO   THE    RESTORATION  !$$ 

a  library  now  in  the  British  Museum.  A  number  of 
writers  took  part  in  the  Puritan  and  Church  contro- 
versies, among  whom  for  graphic  force  William  Prynne 
stands  out  clearly.  But  the  great  controversialist  was 
Milton.  His  prose  is  still,  under  the  Commonwealth, 
Elizabethan  in  style.  It  has  the  fire  and  violence,  the 
eloquence  and  diffuseness  of  the  earlier  literature,  but  in 
spite  of  the  praise  its  style  has  received,  it  can  in  reality 
be  scarcely  called  a  style.  It  has  all  the  faults  a  prose 
style  can  have  except  obscurity  and  the  commonplace. 
Its  magnificent  storms  of  eloquence  ought  to  be  in 
poetry,  and  it  never  charms,  though  it  amazes,  except 
when  Milton  becomes  purposely  simple  in  personal 
narrative.  It  has  no  humour,  but  it  has  almost  unex- 
ampled individuality  and  ferocity.  Among  this  tem- 
pestuous pamphleteering  one  pamphlet  is  almost  singular 
in  its  masterly  and  uplifted  thought,  and  the  style  only 
rarely  loses  its  dignity.  This  is  the  Areopagitica.  In 
pleasant  contrast  to  these  controversies  arises  the  gentle 
literature  of  Izaak  Walton's  Compleat  Angler,  1653,  a 
book  which  resembles  in  its  quaint  and  garrulous  style 
the  rustic  scenery  and  prattling  rivers  that  it  celebrates, 
and  marks  the  quiet  interest  in  country  life  which  had 
now  arisen  in  England.  Prose,  then,  in  the  time  of 
James  and  Charles  I.,  and  of  the  Commonwealth,  had 
largely  developed  its  powers. 

97.  The  Poetry  of  the  Reign  of  James  I.  —  It  is  said 
that  during  this  reign  and  the  following  one,  poetry 
declined.     On  the  whole  that  is  true,  but  it  is  true  with 


156  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

many  modifications.  We  must  remember  that  Shake- 
speare and  many  of  the  EUzabethan  poets,  Uke  Drayton 
and  Daniel,  did  their  finest  work  in  the  reign  of  James  I. 
Yet  there  was  decline.  The  various  elements  which  we 
have  noticed  in  the  poetry  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  without 
the  exception  even  of  the  slight  Catholic  element,  though 
opposed  to  each  other,  were  filled  with  one  spirit — the 
love  of  England  and  the  queen.  Nor  were  they  ever 
sharply  divided ;  they  are  found  interwoven,  and  modi- 
fying one  another  in  the  same  poet,  as  for  instance  Puri- 
tanism and  Chivalry  in  Spenser,  Catholicism  and  Love  in 
Constable  :  and  all  are  mixed  together  in  Shakespeare 
and  the  dramatists.  This  unity  of  spirit  in  poetry 
became  less  and  less  after  the  queen's  death.  The  ele- 
ments remained,  but  they  were  separated.  The  cause  of 
this  was  that  the  strife  in  politics  between  the  Divine 
Right  of  Kings  and  Liberty,  and  in  religion  between  the 
Church  and  the  Puritans,  grew  so  defined  and  intense 
that  England  ceased  to  be  at  one,  and  the  poets  repre- 
sented the  parties,  not  the  whole,  of  England,  Then, 
too,  that  general  passion  and  Hfe  which  inflamed  every- 
thing Elizabethan  lessened,  and  as  it  lessened,  the  faults 
of  the  Elizabethan  work  became  more  prominent ;  they 
were  even  supposed  to  be  excellences.  Hence  the  fan- 
tastic, far-fetched,  involved  style,  which  was  derived  from 
the  Euphues  and  the  Arcadia,  grew  into  favour  and  was 
developed  in  verse,  till  it  ended  by  greatly  injuring  good 
sense  and  clearness  in  English  poetry.  In  the  reaction 
from  this  the  critical  and  classical  school  began.     Again, 


V  ELIZABETH   TO    THE    RESTORATION  1 57 

when  passion  lessens,  original  work  lessens,  and  imitation 
begins.  The  reign  of  James  is  marked  by  a  class  of 
poets  who  imitated  Spenser.  Giles  Fletcher  in  his 
Chris fs  Victory  and  Triumph,  1610,  owned  Spenser  as 
his  master.  So  did  his  brother  Phineas  Fletcher,  whose 
Purple  Island,  an  allegory  of  the  human  body,  1633,  ^^^ 
both  grace  and  sweetness.  We  may  not  say  that  Will- 
iam Browne  imitated,  but  only  that  he  was  influenced 
by  Spenser.  His  Britannia's  Pastorals  in  two  parts, 
1 6 13-16,  followed  by  the  seven  eclogues  of  the  6';^^/^(fr^j 
Pipe,  are  an  example  in  true  poetry  of  the  ever-recurring 
element  in  English  poetry,  pleasure  in  country  life  and 
scenery,  which  from  this  time  forth  grew  through  Milton, 
Wither,  Marvell,  and  then,  after  an  apparent  death,  through 
Thomson,  Gray,  and  Collins,  into  its  wonderful  flower  in 
our  own  century.  These,  if  we  include  the  poetry  of  the 
Dramatists,  especially  the  Underwoods  of  Ben  Jonson, 
and  the  poems  already  mentioned  of  Drummond  and 
Stirling,  are  the  poets  of  the  reign  of  James  I.  They 
link  back  to  Elizabeth's  time  and  its  temper,  and  it  may 
be  said  of  them  that  they  have  no  special  turn,  save  that 
which  arises  from  their  own  individuality.  That  cannot 
be  said  of  the  poets  of  Charles  I.'s  reign,  even  though 
they  may  be  classed  as  writing  under  the  influence  of 
Ben  Jonson  and  of  Donne. 

98.  The  Caroline  Poets,  as  they  are  called,  are  love 
poets  or  religious  poets.  Often,  as  in  the  case  of  Herrick 
and  Crashaw,  they  combined  both  kinds  into  a  single 
volume.    Sometimes  they  were  only  religious  like  Her- 


158  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

bert,  sometimes  only  love  poets  like  Lovelace  and  Suck- 
ling. But  whatever  they  were,  they  were  as  individual  as 
Botticelli,  with  whose  position  and  whose  contemporaries 
in  painting  they  may,  with  much  justice,  be  compared. 
The  greatest  of  these  was  Robert  Herrick.  The  gay 
and  glancing  charm  of  The  Hesperides,  1648,  in  which 
Horace  and  TibuUus  seem  to  mingle ;  their  peculiar  art 
which  never  misses  its  aim,  nor  fails  in  exquisite  execution  ; 
the  almost  equal  power  of  The  Noble  Numbers,  published 
along  with  the  Hesperidesy  in  which  the  spiritual  side  of 
Herrick's  nature  expressed  itself,  make  him,  within  his 
self-chosen  and  limited  range,  the  most  remarkable  of 
those  who  at  this  time  sat  below  the  mountain  top  on 
which  Milton  was  alone.  Close  beside  him,  but  more 
unequal,  was  Thomas  Carew,  whose  lyrical  poems,  well 
known  as  they  are,  do  not  prevent  our  pleasure  in  his 
graver  work  like  the  Elegy  on  Donne.  Greater  in  im- 
agination, but  more  unequal  still,  was  Richard  Crashaw. 
One  of  his  poems.  The  Flaming  Heart,  expresses  in  its 
name  his  religious  nature  and  his  art.  He  does  not 
bum  with  a  steady  fire,  he  flames  to  heaven ;  and  when 
he  does,  he  is  divine  in  music  and  in  passion.  At  other 
times  he  is  one  of  the  worst  of  the  fantasticals,  of  those 
lovers  of  the  quaint  for  quaintness'  sake,  among  whom  the 
exclusively  religious  poets  of  the  time  are  sadly  to  be 
classed.  There  is  George  Herbert,  whose  Temple, 
1 63 1,  is,  by  the  purity  and  devotion  of  its  poems,  dear 
to  all.  It  is  his  quiet  religion,  his  quaint,  contemplative, 
vicarage- garden  note  of  thought  and  scholarship  which 


V  ELIZABETH    TO   THE   RESTORATION  1 59 

pleases  most,  and  will  always  please,  the  calm  piety  of 
England.  He  also  is  individual,  and  so  is  Henry 
Vaughan,  whose  Sacred  Poems ,  165 1,  unequal  as  a  whole, 
love  nature  dearly,  and  leap  sometimes  into  a  higher  air 
of  poetry  than  Herbert  could  attain ;  **  transcend  our 
wonted  themes,  and  into  glory  peep."  Nor  must  we 
forget  William  Habington,  who  mingled  his  devotion  to 
Roman  Catholicism  with  the  praises  of  his  wife  under  the 
name  of  Castara,  1634;  nor  George  Wither,  who  sent 
forth,  just  before  the  Civil  War  began,  when  he  left  the 
king  for  the  Parliament,  his  Hallelujah,  1641,  a  noble 
series  of  religious  poems ;  nor  Francis  Quarles,  whose 
Divine  Emblems,  1635,  is  still  read  in  the  cottages  of 
England.  These  poets,  with  Henry  More,  the  Platonist, 
and  Joseph  Beaumont,  the  friend  of  Crashaw  and  the 
rival  of  More,  are  far  below  (Wither's  work  being  ex- 
cepted) both  Herbert  and  Vaughan,  and  bring  to  an  end 
the  religious  poetry  of  this  curious  transition  time.  I 
have  omitted  some  poems  of  Cowley  and  of  Edmund 
Waller,  which  appeared  during  the  Commonwealth,  be- 
cause both  these  poets  belong  to  a  new  class  of  poetry, 
the  classical  poetry  of  the  Restoration.  Between  this 
new  kind  of  poetry,  which  rose  to  full  power  in  Dryden, 
and  the  dying  poetry  of  the  transition,  stands  alone  the 
majestic  work  of  a  great  genius  who  touches  the  great 
Elizabethan  time  with  one  hand  and  our  own  time  with 
the  other.  But  before  we  speak  of  Milton,  a  word  must 
be  said  of  the  lyrics. 

99.  The  Songs  and  other  Lyrical  Poetry.  —  All  through 


l60  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  period  between  James  I.  and  the  Restoration,  Song- 
writing  went  on,  and  was  more  natural  and  less  "  meta- 
physical "  than  the  other  forms  of  poetry.  The  elements 
of  decay  attacked  it  slowly ;  those  of  brightness  and  pas- 
sion, nature  and  gaiety,  continued  to  live  in  it.  Moreover, 
the  time  was  remarkable  for  no  small  number  of  lyrical 
poems,  other  than  songs,  of  a  strange  loveUness,  in  which 
the  Elizabethan  excellences  were  enhanced  by  a  special, 
particular  grace,  due  partly  to  the  more  isolated  life  some 
of  the  poets  led,  and  partly  to  the  growth  among  them  of 
a  more  artistic  method. 

With  regard  to  the  Songs,  a  distinct  set  of  them,  on  the 
most  various  subjects,  are  to  be  found  in  the  Dramatists, 
from  Ben  Jonson  to  Shirley.  Another  set  has  been 
collected  out  of  the  many  Song-books  which  appeared 
with  music  and  words.  Many  arose  in  the  court  of 
Charles  I.  and  among  the  Royalists  in  the  country, — 
Cavalier  songs  —  on  love,  on  constancy,  on  dress,  on 
fleeting  fancies  of  every  kind.  Others  were  on  battle  and 
death  for  the  king ;  and  a  few,  sterner  and  more  ideal, 
on  the  Puritan  side.  The  same  power  of  song- writing 
went  on  for  a  brief  time  after  the  Restoration,  but  finally 
perished  in  the  political  ballad  which  was  sung  about  the 
streets  by  the  political  parties  of  the  Revolution.  Then 
the  song-lyric  of  love  was  almost  silent  till  the  days  of 
Burns. 

With  regard  to  the  Lyrical  poems,  it  is  impossible  to 
mention  all  that  are  worthy,  but  an  age  which  produced 
the  masques,  the  poems,  and  the  Sad  Shepherd  of  Ben 


V  ELIZABETH    TO    THE    RESTORATION  l6l 

Jonson ;  which  heard  the  lyrical  measures  of  Fletcher's 
Faithful  Shepherdess ;  which  read  with  joy  Herrick's 
Corinna  and  his  country  lyrics ;  which  wished,  while  it 
had  its  delight  in  Wither's  Philarete,  that  it  was  not  so 
long ;  which  felt  a  finer  thrill  than  usual  of  the  imagina- 
tion in  Marvell's  Emigrants  in  the  Bermudas  and  The 
Thoughts  in  a  Garden  ;  which  was  caught,  as  it  were  into 
another  world,  by  the  Allegro,  the  Penseroso,  the  songs 
in  Comus  and  the  Arcades,  and  by  the  Lycidas  of  Milton 
—  can  scarcely  be  called  an  age  of  decay.  There  was 
decline,  on  the  whole.  We  feel  what  had  passed  away 
when  we  come  to  the  days  of  the  Restoration.  But  the 
Elizabethan  lyrical  day  died  in  a  lovely  sunset.  And  as 
if  to  make  this  clear,  we  meet  with  Milton  who  bore  the 
passion,  the  force,  and  the  beauty  of  the  past  along  with 
his  own  grandeur  into  the  age  of  Dryden. 

loo.  John  Milton  was  the  last  of  the  Elizabethans,  and, 
except  Shakespeare,  far  the  greatest  of  them  all.  Bom  in 
1608,  in  Bread  Street  (close  by  the  Mermaid  Tavern),  he 
may  have  seen  Shakespeare,  for  he  remained  till  he  was 
sixteen  in  London.  His  literary  life  may  be  said  to  begin 
with  his  entrance  into  Cambridge,  in  1625,  the  year  of  the 
accession  of  Charles  I.  Nicknamed  the  "  Lady  of  Christ's" 
from  his  beauty,  delicate  taste,  and  moral  life,  he  soon 
attained  a  reputation  by  his  Latin  poems  and  discourses, 
and  by  his  English  poems  which  revealed  as  clear  and 
original  a  genius  as  that  of  Chaucer  and  Spenser.  Of 
Milton  even  more  than  of  the  two  others,  it  may  be  said 
that  he  was  "  whole  in  himself,  and  owed  to  none."    The 

M 


l62  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Ode  to  the  Nativity,  1629,  the  third  poem  he  composed, 
while  it  went  back  to  the  Elizabethan  age  in  beauty,  in 
instinctive  fire,  went  forward  into  a  new  world  of  art,  the 
world  where  the  architecture  of  the  lyric  is  finished  with 
majesty  and  music.  The  next  year  heard  the  noble 
sounding  strains  of  At  a  Solemn  Music ;  and  the  sonnet. 
On  Attaining  the  Age  of  Twenty-three,  reveals  in  dignified 
beauty  that  intense  personality  which  lives,  like  a  force, 
through  every  line  he  wrote.  He  left  the  university  in 
1632,  and  went  to  live  at  Horton,  near  Windsor,  where 
he  spent  five  years,  steadily  reading  the  Greek  and  Latin 
writers,  and  amusing  himself  with  mathematics  and  music. 
Poetry  was  not  neglected.  The  Allegro  and  Penseroso 
were  written  in  1633  and  probably  the  Arcades ;  Comus 
was  acted  in  1634,  and  Lycidas  composed  in  1637. 
They  prove  that  though  Milton  was  Puritan  in  heart  his 
Puritanism  was  of  that  earlier  type  which  disdained 
neither  the  arts  nor  letters.  But  they  represent  a  grow- 
ing revolt  from  the  Court  and  the  Church.  The  Pen- 
seroso prefers  the  contemplative  life  to  the  mirthful,  and 
Comus,  though  a  masque,  rose  into  a  celestial  poem  to 
the  glory  of  temperance,  and  under  its  allegory  attacked 
the  Court.  Three  years  later,  Lycidas  interrupts  its  ex- 
quisite stream  of  poetry  with  a  fierce  and  resolute  onset 
on  the  greedy  shepherds  of  the  Church.  Milton  had 
taken  his  Presbyterian  bent. 

In  1638  he  went  to  Italy,  the  second  home  of  so  many 
of  the  English  poets,  visited  Florence  where  he  saw 
Galileo,  and  then  passed  on  to  Rome.     At  Naples  he 


V  ELIZABETH   TO   THE   RESTORATION  163 

heard  the  sad  news  of  civil  war,  which  determined  him 
to  return ;  "  inasmuch  as  I  thought  it  base  to  be  travel- 
ling at  my  ease  for  amusement,  while  my  fellow-country- 
men at  home  were  fighting  for  liberty."  At  the  meeting 
of  the  Long  Parliament  we  find  him  in  a  house  in  Alders- 
gate,  where  he  lived  till  1645.  He  had  projected  while 
abroad  a  great  epic  poem  on  the  subject  of  Arthur,  but 
in  London  his  mind  changed,  and  among  a  number  of 
subjects,  tended  at  last  to  Paradise  Lost,  which  he  meant 
to  throw  into  the  form  of  a  Greek  Tragedy  with  lyrics 
and  choruses. 

loi.  Milton's  Prose.  The  Commonwealth.  —  Suddenly 
his  whole  life  changed,  and  for  twenty  years — 1640-60 
—  he  was  carried  out  of  art  into  politics,  out  of  poetry 
into  prose.  Most  of  the  Sonnets,  however,  belong  to 
this  time.  Stately,  rugged,  or  graceful,  as  he  pleased  to 
make  them,  some  with  the  solemn  grandeur  of  Hebrew 
psalms,  others  having  the  classic  ease  of  Horace,  some 
of  his  own  grave  tenderness,  they  are  true,  imlike  those 
of  Shakespeare  and  Spenser,  to  the  correct  form  of  this 
difficult  kind  of  poetry.  But  they  were  all  he  could  now 
do  of  his  true  work.  Before  the  Civil  War  began  in 
1642,  he  had  written  five  vigorous  pamphlets  against 
Episcopacy.  Six  more  pamphlets  appeared  in  the  next 
two  years.  One  of  these  was  the  Areopagitica ;  or, 
Speech  for  the  Liberty  of  Unlicensed  Printing,  1644,  a 
bold  and  eloquent  attack  on  the  censorship  of  the  press 
by  the  Presbyterians.  Another,  remarkable,  like  the 
Areopagitica,  for  its  finer  prose,  was  a  tract  On  Educa- 


164  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP 

Hon.  The  four  pamphlets  in  which  he  advocated  con- 
ditional divorce  made  him  still  more  the  horror  of  the 
Presbyterians.  In  1646  he  published  his  poems,  and  in 
that  year  the  sonnet  On  the  Forcers  of  Conscience  shows 
that  he  had  wholly  ceased  to  be  Presbyterian.  His 
political  pamphlets  begin  when  his  Tenure  of  Kings  and 
Magistrates  defended  in  1649  ^^  execution  of  the  king. 
The  Eikonoclastes  answered  the  Eikon  Basilike  (a  portrait- 
ure of  the  sufferings  of  the  king)  ;  and  his  famous  Latin 
Defence  for  the  People  of  England,  165 1,  rephed  to  Sal- 
masius's  Defence  of  Charles  /.,  and  inflicted  so  pitiless  a 
lashing  on  the  great  Leyden  scholar  that  Milton's  fame 
went  over  the  whole  of  Europe.  In  the  next  year  he 
wholly  lost  his  sight.  But  he  continued  his  work  (being 
Latin  secretary  since  1649)  when  Cromwell  was  made 
Protector,  and  wrote  another  Defence  for  the  English 
People,  1654,  and  a  further  Defence  of  Himself  against 
scurrilous  charges.  '  This  closed  the  controversy  in  1655. 
In  the  last  year  of  the  Protector's  life  he  began  the 
Paradise  Lost,  but  the  death  of  Cromwell  threw  him 
back  into  politics,  and  three  more  pamphlets  on  the 
questions  of  a  Free  Church  and  a  Free  Commonwealth 
were  useless  to  prevent  the  Restoration.  It  was  a  won- 
der he  was  not  put  to  death  in  1660,  and  he  was  in  hid- 
ing and  also  in  custody  for  a  time.  At  last  he  settled  in 
a  house  near  Bunhill  Fields.  It  was  here  that  Paradise 
Lost  was  finished,  before  the  end  of  1665,  and  then  pub- 
lished in  1667. 

102.   Paradise  Lost.  —  We  may  regret  that  Milton  was 


V  ELIZABETH   TO   THE   RESTORATION  l6$ 

shut  away  from  his  art  during  twenty  years  of  contro- 
versy. But  it  may  be  that  the  poems  he  wrote  when  the 
great  cause  he  fought  for  had  closed  in  seeming  defeat 
but  real  victory,  gained  from  its  solemn  issues  and  from 
the  moral  grandeur  with  which  he  wrought  for  its  ends 
their  majestic  movement,  their  grand  style,  and  their 
grave  beauty.  During  the  struggle  he  had  never  for- 
gotten his  art.  *'  I  may  one  day  hope,"  he  said,  speak- 
ing of  his  youthful  studies,  "  to  have  ye  again,  in  a  still 
time,  when  there  shall  be  no  chiding.  Not  in  these 
Noises,"  and  the  saying  strikes  the  note  of  calm  sublim- 
ity which  is  kept  in  Paradise  Lost. 

As  we  read  the  great  epic,  we  feel  that  the  lightness  of 
heart  of  the  Allegro,  that  even  the  quiet  classic  philosophy 
of  the  Cotnus,  are  gone.  The  beauty  of  the  poem  is  like 
that  of  a  stately  temple,  which,  vast  in  conception,  is 
involved  in  detail.  The  style  is  the  greatest  in  the  whole 
range  of  English  poetry.  Milton's  intellectual  force  sup- 
ports and  condenses  his  imaginative  force,  and  his  art  is 
almost  too  conscious  of  itself.  Sublimity  is  its  essential 
difference.  The  subject  is  one  phase  of  the  great  and 
universal  subject  of  high  poetic  thought  and  passion,  that 
struggle  of  Light  with  Darkness,  of  Evil  with  Good, 
which,  arising  in  a  hundred  myths,  keeps  its  undying 
attraction  to  the  present  day.  But  its  great  difficulty  in 
his  case  was  that  he  was  obhged  to  interest  us,  for  a 
great  part  of  the  poem,  in  two  persons,  who,  being  inno- 
cent, were  without  any  such  play  of  human  passion  and 
trouble  as  we  find  in  OEdipus,  ^neas,  Hamlet,  or  Alceste. 


l66  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

In  the  noble  art  with  which  this  is  done  Milton  is  su- 
preme. The  interest  of  the  story  collects  at  first  round 
the  character  of  Satan,  but  he  grows  meaner  as  the  poem 
develops,  and  his  second  degradation  after  he  has  de- 
stroyed innocence  is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  consistent 
motives  in  the  poem.  This  at  once  disposes  of  the  view 
that  Milton  meant  Satan  to  be  the  hero  of  the  epic.  His 
hero  is  Man.  The  deep  tenderness  of  Milton,  his  love 
of  beauty,  the  passionate  fitness  of  his  words  to  his  work, 
his  religious  depth,  fill  the  scenes  in  which  he  paints 
Paradise,  our  parents  and  their  fall,  and  at  last  all  thought 
and  emotion  centre  round  Adam  and  Eve,  until  the 
closing  lines  leave  us  with  their  lonely  image  on  our 
minds.  In  every  part  of  the  poem,  in  every  character  in 
it,  as  indeed  in  all  his  poems,  Milton's  intense  individu- 
ality appears.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  find  it.  The  egotism 
of  such  a  man,  said  Coleridge,  is  a  revelation  of  spirit. 

103.  Milton's  Later  Poems.  —  Paradise  Lost  y^zs  fol- 
lowed by  Paradise  Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes,  pub- 
lished together  in  1 67 1.  Paradise  Regained  o^ens  yiiih. 
the  journey  of  Christ  into  the  wilderness  after  his  bap- 
tism, and  its  four  books  describe  the  temptation  of  Christ 
by  Satan,  and  the  answers  and  victory  of  the  Redeemer. 
The  speeches  in  it  overwhelm  the  action,  and  their 
learned  argument  is  only  relieved  by  a  few  descriptions  ; 
but  these,  as  in  that  of  Athens,  are  done  with  Milton's 
highest  power.  Its  solemn  beauty  of  quietude,  and  a 
more  severe  style  than  that  of  Paradise  Lost,  make  us 
feel  in  it  that  Milton  has  grown  older. 


V  ELIZABETH   TO   THE   RESTORATION  1 67 

In  Samson  Agonistes  the  style  is  still  severer,  even  to 
the  verge  of  a  harshness  which  the  sublimity  alone  tends 
to  modify.  It  is  a  choral  drama,  after  the  Greek  model. 
Samson  in  his  blindness  is  described,  is  called  on  to  make 
sport  for  the  Philistines,  and  overthrows  them  in  the  end. 
Samson  represents  the  fallen  Puritan  cause,  and  Samson's 
victorious  death  Milton's  hopes  for  the  final  triumph  of 
that  cause.  The  poem  has  all  the  grandeur  of  the  last 
words  of  a  great  man  in  whom  there  was  now  "  calm  of 
mind,  all  passion  spent."  It  is  also  the  last  word  of  the 
music  of  the  Elizabethan  drama  long  after  its  notes 
seemed  hushed,  and  its  deep  sound  is  strange  in  the 
midst  of  the  shallow  noise  of  the  Restoration.  Soon 
afterwards,  November,  1674,  blind  and  old  and  fallen  on 
evil  days,  Milton  died;  but  neither  blindness,  old  age, 
nor  evil  days  could  lessen  the  inward  light,  nor  impair 
the  imaginative  power  with  which  he  sang,  it  seemed 
with  the  angels,  the  "  undisturbed  song  of  pure  concent," 
until  he  joined  himself,  at  last,  with  those  "just  spirits 
who  wear  victorious  palms." 

104.  His  "Work. — To  the  greatness  of  the  artist  Milton 
joined  the  majesty  of  a  clear  and  lofty  character.  His 
poetic  style  was  as  stately  as  his  character,  and  proceeded 
from  it.  Living  at  a  time  when  criticism  began  to  purify 
the  verse  of  England,  and  being  himself  well  acquainted 
with  the  great  classical  models,  his  work  is  seldom  weak- 
ened by  the  false  conceits  and  the  intemperance  of  the 
Elizabethan  writers,  and  yet  is  as  imaginative  as  theirs, 
and  as  various.     He  has  not  their  naturalness,  nor  all 


i68  ENGLISH  Literature  chap. 

their  intensity,  but  he  has  a  larger  grace,  a  lovelier  col- 
our, a  closer  eye  for  nature,  a  more  finished  art,  and  a 
sublime  dignity  they  did  not  possess.  All  the  kinds  of 
poetry  which  he  touched  he  touched  with  the  ease  of 
great  strength,  and  with  so  much  energy,  that  they  be- 
came new  in  his  hands.  He  put  a  fresh  life  into  the 
masque,  the  sonnet,  the  elegy,  the  descriptive  lyric,  the 
song,  the  choral  drama;  and  he  created  the  epic  in 
England.  The  lighter  love  poem  he  never  wrote,  and 
we  are  grateful  that  he  kept  his  coarse  satirical  power 
apart  from  his  poetry.  In  some  points  he  was  untrue 
to  his  descent  from  the  Elizabethans,  for  he  had  no  dra- 
matic faculty,  and  he  had  no  humour.  He  summed  up 
in  himself  the  learned  and  artistic  influences  of  the  Eng- 
lish Renaissance,  and  handed  them  on  to  us.  His  taste 
was  as  severe,  his  verse  as  polished,  his  method  and  lan- 
guage as  strict  as  those  of  the  school  of  Dryden  and 
Pope  that  grew  up  when  he  was  old.  A  literary  past 
and  present  thus  met  in  him,  nor  did  he  fail,  like  all  the 
greatest  men,  to  make  a  cast  into  the  future.  He  estab- 
lished the  poetry  of  pure  natural  description.  Lastly,  he 
did  not  represent  in  any  way  the  England  that  followed 
the  Stuarts,  but  he  did  represent  Puritan  England,  and 
the  whole  spirit  of  Puritanism  from  its  cradle  to  its  grave. 
105.  The  Pilgrim's  Progress. — We  might  say  that 
Puritanism  said  its  last  great  words  with  Milton,  were  it 
not  that  its  spirit  continued  in  English  life,  were  it  not 
also  that  four  years  after  his  death,  in  1678,  John  Bun- 
van,  who  had  previously  written  religious  poems,  and  in 


V  ELIZABEtH   TO   THE   REStORAxiON  169 

1665  the  Holy  City,  published  the  Pilgrini's  Progress. 
It  is  the  journey  of  Christian  the  Pilgrim  from  the  City 
of  Destruction  to  the  Celestial  City.  The  second  part 
was  published  in  1684.  In  1682  he  had  written  the 
allegory  of  the  Holy  War,  and  in  1680  The  Life  and 
Death  of  Mr.  Badman,  a  curious  little  story.  I  class 
the  Pilgrini's  Progress  here,  because  in  its  imaginative 
fervour  and  imagery,  and  in  its  quaUty  of  naturalness,  it 
belongs  to  the  spirit  of  the  Elizabethan  times.  Written 
by  a  man  of  the  people,  it  is  a  people's  book ;  and  its 
simple  form  grew  out  of  passionate  feeling,  and  not  out 
of  self-conscious  art.  The  passionate  feeling  was  rehg- 
ious,  and  in  painting  the  pilgrim's  progress  towards 
Heaven,  and  his  battle  with  the  world  and  temptation 
and  sorrow,  the  book  touched  those  deep  and  universal 
interests  which  belong  to  poor  and  rich.  Its  language, 
the  language  of  the  Bible,  and  its  allegorical  form,  initi- 
ated a  plentiful  prose  literature  of  a  similar  kind.  But 
none  have  equalled  it.  Its  form  is  almost  epic  :  its  dra- 
matic dialogue,  its  clear  types  of  character,  its  vivid 
descriptions,  as  of  Vanity  Fair,  and  of  places,  such  as  the 
Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death  and  the  Delectable 
Mountains,  which  represent  states  of  the  human  soul, 
have  given  an  equal  but  a  different  pleasure  to  children 
and  men,  to  the  villager  and  the  scholar. 


I/O  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CttAt. 


CHAPTER  VI 

FROM  THE  RESTORATION  TO  THE  DEATH  OF  POPE  AND 
SWIFT,    1660-1745 

106.  Poetry.  Change  of  Style. — We  have  seen  the 
natural  style  as  distinguished  from  the  artificial  in  the 
Elizabethan  poets.  Style  became  not  only  natural  but 
artistic  when  it  was  made  by  a  great  genius  like  Chaucer, 
Shakespeare,  or  Spenser,  for  a  first-rate  poet  creates 
rules  of  art :  his  work  is  filled  with  laws  which  other  men 
see,  collect,  and  obey.  Art,  which  is  the  just  and  lovely 
arrangement  of  nature  to  fulfil  a  nobly  chosen  aim,  is 
then  bom.  But  when  the  art  of  poetry  is  making,  the 
second-rate  poets,  inspired  only  by  their  feelings,  will 
write  in  a  natural  style  unrestrained  by  rules,  that  is, 
they  will  put  their  feelings  into  verse  without  caring 
much  for  the  form  in  which  they  do  it.  As  long  as  they 
live  in  the  midst  of  a  youthful  national  life,  and  feel  an 
ardent  sympathy  with  it,  their  style  will  be  fresh  and  im- 
passioned, and  give  pleasure  because  of  the  strong  feel- 
ing that  inspires  it.  But  it  will  also  be  extravagant  and 
unrestrained  in  its  use  of  images  and  words  because  of 
its  want  of  art.     This  is  the  general  history  of  the  style 


VI  RESTORATION    TO    DEATH    OF    POPE  I /I 

of  the  second-class  poets  of  the  middle  period  of  Eliza- 
beth's reign,  and  even  Shakespeare  affords  examples  of 
this  want  of  art.  (2)  Afterwards  the  national  life  grew 
chill,  and  the  feelings  of  the  poets  also  chill.  Then  the 
want  of  art  in  the  style  made  itself  felt.  The  far-fetched 
images,  the  hazarded  meanings,  the  over-fanciful  way  of 
putting  thoughts,  the  sensational  expression  of  feeling, 
in  which  the  EHzabethan  poets  indulged,  not  only  ap- 
peared in  all  their  ugUness  when  they  were  inspired  by 
no  ardent  feeUng,  but  were  indulged  in  far  more  than  be- 
fore. Men  tried  to  produce  by  extravagant  use  of  words 
the  same  results  that  a  passionate  sense  of  life  had  pro- 
duced, and  the  more  they  failed  the  more  extravagant  and 
fantastic  they  became,  till  at  last  their  poetry  ceased  to 
have  clear  meaning.  This  is  the  general  history  of  the 
style  of  the  poets  from  the  later  days  of  Elizabeth  till  the 
Civil  War.  (3)  The  natural  style,  unregulated  by  art, 
had  thus  become  unnatural.  When  it  had  reached  that 
point,  men  began  to  feel  how  necessary  it  was  that  the 
work  of  poetry  should  be  subjected  to  the  rules  of  art, 
and  two  influences  partly  caused  and  partly  supported  this 
desire.  One  was  the  influence  of  Milton.  Milton,  first 
by  his  superb  genius,  which,  as  I  said,  creates  of  itself 
rules  of  art,  and  secondly  by  his  knowledge  and  imitation 
of  the  great  classical  models,  was  able  to  give  the  first 
example  in  England  of  a  pure,  grand,  and  finished  style ; 
and  in  blank  verse,  in  the  lyric  and  the  sonnet,  wrote  for 
the  first  time  with  absolute  correctness.  Another  influence 
was  that  of  the  movement  all  over  Europe  towards  inquiry 


1^2  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 


CHAP. 


into  the  right  way  of  doing  things,  and  into  the  truth  of 
things,  a  movement  we  shall  soon  see  at  work  in  science, 
politics,  and  religion.  In  poetry  it  produced  a  school 
of  criticism  which  first  took  form  in  France,  and  the 
influence  of  Boileau,  La  Fontaine,  and  others  who  were 
striving  after  greater  finish  and  neatness  of  expression, 
told  on  England  now.  It  is  an  influence  which  has  been 
exaggerated.  It  is  absurd  to  place  the  "  creaking  lyre  " 
of  Boileau  side  by  side  with  Dryden's  "  long  resounding 
march  and  energy  divine."  Our  critical  school  of  poets 
have  few  French  qualities  in  them  even  when  they  imi- 
tate the  French.  (4)  Further,  our  own  poets  had 
already,  before  the  Restoration,  begun  the  critical  work, 
and  the  French  influence  served  only  to  give  it  a  greater 
impulse.  We  shall  see  the  growth  of  a  colder  and  more 
t:orrect  phrasing  and  versification  in  Waller,  Denham,  and 
Cowley.  Vigour  was  given  to  this  new  method  in  art  by 
Dryden,  and  perfection  of  artifice  added  to  it  by  Pope. 
The  artificial  style  succeeded  to  and  extinguished  the 
natural,  or  to  put  it  otherwise,  a  merely  intellectual 
poetry  finally  overcame  a  poetry  in  which  emotion  always 
accompanied  thought. 

107.  Change  of  Poetic  Subject. — The  subject  of  the 
Elizabethan  poets  was  Man  as  influenced  by  the  Pas- 
sions, and  it  was  treated  fi-om  the  side  of  natural  feeling. 
This  was  fully  and  splendidly  done  by  Shakespeare.  But 
after  a  time  this  subject  followed,  as  we  have  seen  in 
speaking  of  the  drama,  the  same  career  as  the  style.  It 
was  treated  in  an  extravagant  and  sensational  manner, 


VI  RESTORATION    TO    DEATH    OF    POPE  1/3 

and  the  representation  of  the  passions  tended  to  become 
unnatural  or  fantastic.  Milton  redeemed  the  subject 
from  this  vicious  excess.  He  wrote  in  a  grave  and  natu- 
ral manner  of  the  passions  of  the  human  heart ;  he  made 
strong  in  English  poetry  the  reUgious  passions  of  love  of 
God,  of  sorrow  for  sin,  and  he  raised  in  song  the  moral 
passions  into  a  solemn  splendour.  But  with  him  the 
subject  of  man  as  influenced  by  the  great  passions  died 
for  a  time.  Dryden,  Pope,  and  their  followers  turned 
to  another  subject.  They  left,  except  in  Dryden's 
Dramas  and  Fables,  the  passions  aside,  and  wrote  of  the 
things  in  which  the  intellect  and  the  casuistical  con- 
science, the  social  and  political  instincts  in  man,  were 
interested.  In  this  way  the  satiric,  didactic,  philosophi- 
cal, and  party  poetry  of  a  new  school  arose. 

1 08.  The  Poems  in  which  the  New  School  began  belong 
in  date  to  the  age  before  the  Restoration,  but  in  spirit 
and  form  they  were  the  sources  of  the  poetry  which  is 
called  classical  or  critical,  or  artificial.  Edmund  Waller, 
Sir  John  Denham,  and  Abraham  Cowley  are  the  pre- 
cursors of  Dryden.  Waller  remodelled  the  heroic  coup- 
let of  Chaucer,  and  gave  it  the  precise  character  which 
made  it  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  the  prevailing 
form  of  verse.  He  wrote  his  earliest  poems  about  1623, 
in  precisely  the  same  symmetrical  manner  as  Dryden 
and  Pope.  His  new  manner  was  not  followed  for  many 
years,  till  Denham  published  in  1642  his  Cooper's  Hill. 
"  The  excellence  and  dignity  of  rhyme  were  never  fully 
known,"  said  Dryden,  "  till  Mr.  Waller  taught  it,  but  this 


174  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

sweetness  of  his  Ijrric  poetry  was  afterwards  followed  in 
the  epic  of  Sir  John  Denham  in  his  Cooper's  Hill.''  The 
chill  stream  of  this  poem,  which  is  neither  "lyric"  nor 
"  epic,"  has  the  metrical  cadence,  but  none  of  the  grip 
and  force  of  Dryden's  verse.  Cowley's  earlier  poems 
belong  to  the  Elizabethan  phantasies,  but  the  later  were, 
with  the  exception  of  some  noble  poems  of  personal  feel- 
ing, cold  and  exact  enough  for  the  praise  of  the  new 
school.  He  invented  that  curious  misnomer  —  the  Pin- 
daric Ode  —  which,  among  all  its  numerous  offspring, 
had  but  one  splendid  child  in  Dryden's  Alexander's 
Feast.  When  Gray  took  up  the  ode  again,  Cowley  was 
not  his  master.  Sir  W.  Davenant's  Gondibert,  165 1,  also 
an  heroic  poem,  is  another  example  of  this  transition. 
Worthless  as  poetry,  it  represents  the  new  interest  in 
political  philosophy  and  in  science  that  was  arising,  and 
preludes  the  intellectual  poetry.  Its  preface  discourses 
of  rhyme  and  the  rules  of  art,  and  embodies  the  critical 
influence  which  came  over  with  the  exiled  court  from 
France.  The  critical  school  had  therefore  begun  even 
before  Dryden's  poems  were  written.  The  change  was 
less  sudden  than  it  seemed. 

Satiric  poetry,  soon  to  become  a  greater  thing,  was 
made  during  this  transition  time  into  a  powerful  weapon 
by  two  men,  each  on  a  different  side.  Andrew  Marvell's 
Satires,  after  the  Restoration,  exhibit  the  Puritan's  wrath 
with  the  vices  of  the  court  and  king,  and  his  shame  for 
the  disgrace  of  England  among  the  nations.  The  Hudi- 
bras  of  Samuel  Butler,  in  1663,  represents  the  fierce 


VI  RESTORATION   TO    DEATH    OF    POPE  1 75 

reaction  which  had  set  in  against  Puritanism.  It  is 
justly  famed  for  wit,  learning,  good  sense,  and  ingenious 
drollery,  and,  in  accordance  with  the  new  criticism,  it  is 
absolutely  without  obscurity.  It  is  often  as  terse  as 
Pope's  best  work.  But  it  is  too  long,  its  wit  wearies  us 
at  last,  and  it  undoes  the  force  of  its  attack  on  the  Puri- 
tans by  its  exaggeration.  Satire  should  have  at  least  the 
semblance  of  truth ;  yet  Butler  calls  the  Puritans  cow- 
ards. We  turn  now  to  the  greatest  of  these  poets  in 
whom  poetry  is  founded  on  intellect  rather  than  on  feel- 
ing, and  whose  verse  is  mostly  devoted  to  argument  and 
satire. 

109.  John  Dry  den  was  the  first  of  the  new,  as  Milton 
was  the  last  of  the  elder,  school  of  poetry.  It  was  late  in 
life  that  he  gained  fame.  Bom  in  1631,  he  was  a  Crom- 
wellite  till  the  Restoration,  when  he  began  the  changes 
which  mark  his  life.  His  poem  on  the  death  of  the  Pro- 
tector was  soon  followed  by  the  Astrcsa  Redux,  which 
celebrated  the  return  of  Justice  to  the  realm  in  the  per- 
son of  Charles  II.  The  Annus  Mirabilis  appeared  in 
1667,  and  in  this  his  metrical  ease  was  first  clearly  marked. 
But  his  power  of  exact  reasoning  expressing  itself  with 
powerful  and  ardent  ease  in  a  rapid  succession  of  con- 
densed thoughts  in  verse,  was  not  shown  (save  in  drama) 
till  he  was  fifty  years  old,  in  the  first  part  of  Absalom  and 
Achitophel,  the  foremost  of  EngUsh  satires.  He  had  been 
a  playwriter  for  fourteen  years,  till  its  appearance  in  1681, 
and  the  rhymed  plays  which  he  had  written  enabled  him 
to  perfect  the  versification  which  is  now  so  remarkable 


176  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

in  his  work.  The  satire  itself,  written  in  mockery  of  the 
Popish  Plot  and  the  Exclusion  Bill,  attacked  Shaftesbury 
as  Achitophel,  was  kind  to  Monmouth  as  Absalom,  and 
in  its  sketch  of  Buckingham  as  Zimri  the  poet  avenged 
himself  for  the  Rehearsal.  It  was  the  first  fine  example 
of  that  party  poetry  which  became  still  more  bitter  and 
personal  in  the  hands  of  Pope.  It  was  followed  by  the 
Medal,  a  new  attack  on  Shaftesbury,  and  the  Mac  Fleck- 
noe,  1682,  in  which  Shadwell,  a  rival  poet,  who  had  sup- 
ported Shaftesbury's  party,  was  made  the  witless  successor 
of  Richard  Flecknoe,  a  poet  of  all  kinds  of  poetry,  and 
master  of  none.  Then  in  the  same  year,  after  the  arrest 
of  Monmouth,  the  second  part  of  Absalom  and  Achito- 
phel appeared,  all  of  which,  except  two  hundred  hues, 
was  written  by  Nahum  Tate.  These  were  four  terrible 
masterpieces  of  ruthless  wit  and  portraiture.  Then  he 
turned  to  express  his  transient  theology  in  verse,  and  the 
Religio  Laid,  1682,  defends  and  states  the  argument  for 
the  Church  of  England.  It  was  perhaps  poverty  that  led 
him  to  change  his  religion,  and  the  Hind  and  Panther, 
1687,  is  a  model  of  melodious  reasoning  in  behalf  of  the 
milk-white  hind  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  The  Dissenters 
are  mercilessly  treated  under  the  image  of  the  baser 
beasts ;  while  at  first  the  Panther,  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, is  gently  touched,  but  in  the  end  lashed  with  sever- 
ity. However,  Hind  and  Panther  tell,  at  the  close,  two 
charming  stories  to  one  another.  It  produced  in  reply 
one  of  the  happiest  burlesques  in  English  poetry,  The 
Country  Mouse  and  the  City  Mouse,  the  work  of  Charles 


VI       RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE     I// 

Montague  (Lord  Halifax),  and  Mat  Prior.  Deprived  of 
his  offices  at  the  Revolution,  Dryden  turned  again  to  the 
drama  and  to  prose,  but  the  failure  of  the  last  of  his  good 
plays  in  1694,  drove  him  again  from  the  stage,  and  he 
gave  himself  up  to  his  Translation  of  Virgil  which  he 
pubUshed  in  1697.  As  a  narrative  poet  his  Fables, 
Ancient  and  Modern,  finished  late  in  life,  in  1699,  give 
him  a  high  rank  in  this  class  of  poetry.  They  sin  from 
coarseness,  but  in  style,  in  magnificent  march  of  verse, 
in  intellectual  but  not  imaginative  fire,  in  ease  but  not 
in  grace,  they  are  excellent.  As  a  lyric  poet  his  fame 
rests  on  the  animated  Song  for  St.  Cecilia's  Day,  1687, 
and  on  Alexander's  Feast,  1697.  From  Milton's  death, 
1674,  till  his  ovm  in  1700,  Dryden  reigned  undisputed, 
and  round  his  throne  in  Will's  Coffeehouse,  where  he  sat 
as  "  Glorious  John,"  we  may  place  the  names  of  the  lesser 
poets,  the  Earls  of  Dorset,  Roscommon,  and  Mulgrave, 
Sir  Charles  Sedley,  and  the  Earl  of  Rochester.  The 
lighter  poetry  of  the  court  lived  on  in  the  two  last.  John 
Oldham  won  a  short  fame  by  his  Satire  on  the  Jesuits, 
1679;  and  Bishop  Ken,  1668,  established,  in  his  Morn- 
ing and  Evening  Hymns,  a  new  type  of  religious  poetry. 

no.  Prose  Literature  of  the  Restoration  and  Revolu- 
tion. Criticism.  —  As  Dryden  was  now  first  in  poetry,  so 
he  was  in  prose.  No  one  can  understand  the  poetry  of 
this  time,  in  its  relation  to  the  past,  to  the  future,  and 
to  France,  who  does  not  read  the  Critical  Essays  pre- 
fixed to  his  dramas,  On  the  Historical  Poem,  on  dramatic 
rhyme,  on  Heroic  Plays,  on  the  classical  writers,  and  his 

N 


1/8  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Essay  on  Dramatic  Poetry.  He  is  in  these  essays,  not 
only  the  leader  of  modern  literary  criticism,  but  the 
leader  of  that  modern  prose  in  which  the  style  is  easy, 
unaffected,  moulded  to  the  subject,  and  in  which  the 
proper  words  are  put  in  the  proper  places.  Dryden  was 
a  great  originator. 

III.  Science.  ■ —  During  the  Civil  War  the  religious 
and  political  struggle  absorbed  the  country,  but  yet, 
apart  from  the  strife,  a  few  men  who  cared  for  scien- 
tific matters  met  at  one  another's  houses.  Out  of  this 
little  knot,  after  the  Restoration,  arose  the  Royal  Society, 
embodied  in  1662.  Astronomy,  experimental  chemistry, 
medicine,  mineralogy,  zoology,  botany,  vegetable  physi- 
ology, were  all  founded  as  studies,  and  their  literature 
begun,  in  the  age  of  the  Restoration.  One  man's  work 
was  so  great  in  science  as  to  merit  his  name  being  men- 
tioned among  the  literary  men  of  England.  In  1671 
Isaac  Newton  laid  his  Theory  of  Light  before  the  Royal 
Society ;  in  the  year  before  the  Revolution  his  Principia 
established,  by  its  proof  of  the  theory  of  gravitation,  the 
true  system  of  the  universe. 

It  was  in  political  and  religious  knowledge,  however, 
that  the  intellectual  inquiry  of  the  nation  was  most 
shown.  When  the  thinking  spirit  succeeds  the  active 
and  adventurous  in  a  people,  one  of  the  first  things  they 
will  think  upon  is  the  true  method  and  grounds  of  gov- 
ernment, both  divine  and  human.  Two  sides  will  be 
taken :  the  side  of  authority  and  the  side  of  reason  in 
Religion ;  the  side  of  authority  and  the  side  of  indi- 
vidual liberty  in  Politics. 


VI      RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OP  POPE     1/9 

112.  The  Theological  Literature  of  those  who  declared 
that  reason  was  supreme  as  a  test  of  truth,  arose  with 
some  men  who  met  at  Lord  Falkland's  just  before  the 
Civil  War,  and  especially  with  John  Hales  and  William 
Chillingworth.  The  same  kind  of  work,  though  modified 
towards  more  sedateness  of  expression,  and  less  rational- 
istic, was  now  done  by  Archbishop  Tillotson,  and  Bishop 
Burnet.  In  1678,  Cudworth's  Intellectual  System  of  the 
Universe  is  perhaps  the  best  book  on  the  controversy 
which  then  took  form  against  those  who  were  called 
Atheists.  A  number  of  divines  in  the  EngUsh  Church 
took  sides  for  Authority  or  Reason,  or  opposed  the 
growing  Deism  during  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  was  an  age  of  preachers,  and  Isaac  Barrow, 
Newton's  predecessor  in  the  chair  of  mathematics  at 
Cambridge,  could  preach,  with  grave  and  copious  elo- 
quence, for  three  hours  at  a  time.  Theological  prose 
was  strengthened  by  the  publication  of  the  sermons  of 
Edward  Stillingfleet  and  William  Sherlock,  and  their 
adversary,  Robert  South,  was  as  witty  in  rhetoric  as 
he  was  fierce  in  controversy. 

113.  Political  Literature.  —  The  resistance  to  authority 
in  the  opposition  to  the  theory  of  the  Divine  Right  of 
Kings  did  not  much  enter  into  literature  till  after  the 
severe  blow  that  theory  received  in  the  Civil  War.  Dur- 
ing the  Commonwealth  and  after  the  Restoration  the 
struggle  took  the  form  of  a  discussion  on  the  abstract 
question  of  the  Science  of  Government,  and  was  mingled 
with  an  inquiry  into  the  origin  of  society  and  the  ground 


l8o  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

of  social  life.  Thomas  Hobbes,  during  the  Common- 
wealth, was  the  first  who  dealt  with  the  question  from 
the  side  of  abstract  reason,  and  he  is  also,  before  Dryden, 
the  first  of  all  our  prose  writers  whose  style  may  be  said 
to  be  uniform  and  correct,  and  adapted  carefully  to  the 
subjects  on  which  he  wrote.  His  treatise,  the  Leviathan, 
1651,  declared  (i)  that  the  origin  of  all  power  was  in 
the  people,  and  (2)  that  the  end  of  all  power  was  the 
commonweal.  It  destroyed  the  theory  of  a  Divine 
Right  of  Kings  and  Priests,  but  it  created  another  kind 
of  Divine  Right  when  it  said  that  the  power  lodged  in 
rulers  by  the  people  could  not  be  taken  away  by  the 
people.  Sir  R.  Filmer  supported  the  side  of  Divine 
Right  in  his  Patriarcha,  published  1680.  Henry  Nevile, 
in  his  Dialogue  concerning  Government,  and  James  Har- 
rington in  his  romance.  The  Commonwealth  of  Oceana, 
published  at  the  beginning  of  the  Commonwealth,  con- 
tended that  all  secure  government  was  to  be  based  on 
property,  but  Nevile  supported  a  monarchy,  and  Har- 
rington —  with  whom  I  may  class  Algernon  Sidney,  whose 
political  treatise  on  government  is  as  statesmanlike  as  it 
is  finely  written  —  a  democracy,  on  this  basis.  I  may 
here  mention  that  it  was  during  this  period,  in  1667,  that 
the  first  effort  was  made  after  a  Science  of  Political 
Economy  by  Sir  William  Petty  in  his  Treatise  on  Taxes. 
The  political  pamphlet  yvzs  also  begun  at  this  time  by  Sir 
Roger  L'Estrange,  and  George  Savile,  Lord  Halifax. 

114.   John  Locke,  after  the  Revolution,  in  1690,  fol- 
lowed the  two  doctrines  of  Hobbes  in  his  treatises  on 


VI  RESTORATION    TO   DEATH   OF    POPE  l8l 

Civil  Government,  but  with  these  important  additions  — 
(i)  that  the  people  have  a  right  to  take  away  the  power 
given  by  them  to  the  ruler,  (2)  that  the  ruler  is  respon- 
sible to  the  people  for  the  trust  reposed  in  him,  and  (3) 
that  legislative  assemblies  are  Supreme  as  the  voice  of 
the  people.  This  was  the  political  philosophy  of  the 
Revolution.  Locke  carried  the  same  spirit  of  free  in- 
quiry into  the  realm  of  rehgion,  and  in  his  Letters  on 
Toleration  laid  down  the  philosophical  grounds  for  lib- 
erty of  religious  thought.  He  finished  by  entering  the 
realm  of  metaphysical  inquiry.  In  1690  appeared  his 
Essay  concerning  the  Human  Understanding,  in  which 
he  investigated  its  limits,  and  traced  all  ideas,  and  there- 
fore all  knowledge,  to  experience.  In  his  clear  state- 
ment of  the  way  in  which  the  Understanding  works,  in 
the  way  in  which  he  guarded  it  and  Language  against 
their  errors  in  the  inquiry  after  truth,  he  did  almost  as 
much  for  the  true  method  of  thinking  as  Bacon  had  done 
for  the  science  of  nature. 

115.  The  intellectual  stir  of  the  time  produced,  apart 
from  the  great  movement  of  thought,  a  good  deal  of 
Miscellaneous  Literature.  The  painting  of  short  "  char- 
acters "  was  carried  on  after  the  Restoration  by  Samuel 
Butler  and  W.  Charleton.  These  "  characters  "  had  no 
personality,  but  as  party  spirit  deepened,  names  thinly 
disguised  were  given  to  characters  drawn  of  living  men, 
and  Dryden  and  Pope  in  poetry,  and  all  the  prose  wits 
of  the  time  of  Queen  Anne  and  George  I.,  made  per- 
sonal and  often  violent  sketches  of  their  opponents  a 


1 82  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

special  element  in  literature.  On  the  other  hand,  Izaak 
Walton's  Lives,  in  1670,  are  examples  of  kind,  agreeable^ 
and  careful  Biography.  Cowley's  small  volume,  written 
shortly  before  his  death  in  1667,  gave  richness  to  the 
Essay,  and  its  prose  almost  anticipated  the  prose  of  Dry- 
den.  John  Evelyn's  multitudinous  writings  are  them- 
selves a  miscellany.  He  wrote  on  painting,  sculpture, 
architecture,  timber  (the  Sylva),  on  gardening,  com- 
merce, and  he  illustrates  the  searching  spirit  of  the  age. 
In  William  III.'s  time  Sir  William  Temple's  pleasant 
Essays  bring  us  in  style  and  tone  nearer  to  the  great 
class  of  essayists  of  whom  Addison  was  chief.  Lady 
Rachel  Russell's  Letters  begin  the  Letter-writing  liter- 
ature of  England.  Pepys  (1660-9),  and  Evelyn,  whose 
Diary  grows  full  after  1640,  gave  rise  to  that  class  of  gos- 
siping Memoirs  which  has  be.n  of  so  much  use  in  giving 
colour  to  history.  History  itself  at  this  time  is  little 
better  than  memoirs,  and  such  a  name  may  be  fairly 
given  to  Bishop  Burnet's  History  of  his  Own  Time  and 
to  his  History  of  the  Reformation.  Finally  Classical 
Criticism,  in  the  discussion  on  the  genuineness  of  the 
Letters  of  Phalaris,  was  created  by  Richard  Bentley  in 
1697-9.  Literature  was  therefore  plentiful.  It  was 
also  correct,  but  it  was  not  inventive. 

1x6.  The  Literature  of  Queen  Anne  and  the  First 
Georges.  —  Witl'  ihe  closing  years  of  William  III.  and 
the  accession  of  Queen  Anne  (1702)  a  literature  arose 
which  was  partly  new  and  partly  a  continuance  of  that 
of  the   Restoration.     The   conflict   between  those  who 


VI  RESTORATION   TO   DEATH   OF   POPE  1 83 

took  the  oath  to  the  new  dynasty  and  the  Nonjurors  who 
refused,  the  hot  blood  that  it  produced,  the  war  between 
Dissent  and  Church,  and  between  the  two  parties  which 
now  took  the  names  of  Whig  and  Tory,  produced  a  mass 
of  poHtical  pamphlets,  of  which  Daniel  Defoe's  and 
Swift's  were  the  best ;  of  songs  and  ballads,  like  Lillibul- 
lero,  which  were  sung  in  every  street ;  of  squibs,  reviews, 
of  satirical  poems  and  letters.  Every  one  joined  in  it, 
and  it  rose  to  importance  in  the  work  of  the  greater  men 
who  mingled  literary  studies  with  their  political  excite- 
ment. In  politics,  all  the  abstract  discussions  we  have 
mentioned  ceased  to  be  abstract,  and  became  personal 
and  practical,  and  the  spirit  of  inquiry  applied  itself  more 
closely  to  Lhe  questions  of  every-day  life.  The  whole  of 
this  stirring  literary  life  was  concentrated  in  London, 
where  the  agitation  of  society  was  hottest;  and  it  is 
round  this  vivid  ity  life  that  the  literature  of  Queen 
Anne  and  the  two  following  reigns  is  best  grouped. 

117.  It  was,  with  a  few  exceptions,  a  Party  Literature. 
The  Whig  and  Tory  leaders  enlisted  on  their  sides  the 
best  poets  and  prose  writers,  who  fiercely  satirised  and 
unduly  praised  them  under  names  thinly  disguised.  Our 
"  Augustan  Age  "  was  an  age  of  unbridled  slander.  Per- 
sonaUties  were  sent  to  and  fro  like  shots  in  battle.  Those 
who  could  do  this  work  well  were  well  rewarded,  but  the 
rank  and  file  of  writers  were  left  to  starve.  Literature 
was  thus  honoured  not  for  itself,  but  for  the  sake  of  party. 
The  result  was  that  the  abler  men  lowered  it  by  making 
it  a  political  tool,  and  the  smaller  men,  the  fry  of  Grub 


184  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Street,  degraded  it  by  using  it  in  the  same  way,  only  in  a 
baser  manner.  Their  flattery  was  as  abject  as  their  abuse 
was  shameless,  and  both  were  stupid.  They  received  and 
deserved  the  merciless  lashing  which  Pope  was  soon  to 
give  them  in  the  Dunciad.  Being  a  party  literature,  it 
naturally  came  to  study  and  to  look  sharply  into  human 
character  and  into  human  life  as  seen  in  the  great  city. 
It  debated  subjects  of  literary  and  scientific  inquiry  and 
of  philosophy  with  great  ability,  but  without  depth.  It 
discussed  all  the  varieties  of  social  life,  and  painted  town 
society  more  vividly  than  has  been  done  before  or  since  ; 
and  it  was  so  wholly  taken  up  with  this,  that  country  life 
and  its  interests,  except  in  the  writings  of  Addison,  were 
scarcely  touched  by  it  at  all.  Criticism  being  so  active, 
the  fortn  in  which  thought  was  expressed  was  now  espe- 
cially dwelt  on,  and  the  result  was  that  the  style  of  English 
prose  became  even  more  simple  than  in  Dryden's  hands ; 
and  English  verse,  leaving  Dryden's  power  behind  it, 
reached  a  neatness  of  expression  as  exquisite  as  it  was 
artificial.  At  the  same  time,  and  for  the  same  reasons, 
Nature,  Passion,  and  Imagination  decayed  in  poetry. 

n8.  Alexander  Pope  absorbed  and  reflected  all  these 
elements.  Bom  in  1688,  he  wrote  tolerable  verse  at 
twelve  years  old ;  the  Pastorals  appeared  in  1 709,  and 
two  years  afterwards  he  took  full  rank  as  the  critical  poet 
in  the  Essay  on  Criticism  ( 1 7 1 1 ) .  The  next  year  saw 
the  first  cast  of  his  Rape  of  the  Lock,  the  most  brilliant 
occasional  poem  in  our  language.  This  closed  what  we 
may  call  his  first  period.     In  171 2  his  sacred  pastoral, 


VI  RESTORATION    TO    DEATH    OF    POPE  I85 

The  Messiah,  appeared,  and  in  17 13,  when  he  published 
Windsor  Forest,  he  became  known  to  Swift  and  to  Henry 
St.  John,  Lord  Bolingbroke.  When  these,  with  Gay, 
Parnell,  Prior,  Arbuthnot,  and  others,  formed  the  Scrib- 
lerus  Club,  Pope  joined  them,  and  soon  rose  into  great 
fame  by  his  Translation  of  the  Iliad  (1715-20),  and  by 
the  Translation  of  the  Odyssey  (1723-5),  in  which  he 
was  assisted  by  Fenton  and  Broome.  Being  now  at  ease, 
for  he  received  fully  9000/.  for  this  work,  he  published 
from  his  retreat  at  Twickenham,  and  in  bitter  scorn  of 
the  poetasters  and  of  all  the  petty  scribblers  who  annoyed 
him,  the  Dunciad,  1728,  Its  original  hero  was  Lewis 
Theobald,  but  when  the  fourth  book  was  published,  under 
Warburton's  influence,  in  1742,  Colley  Gibber  was  en- 
throned as  the  King  of  Dunces  instead  of  Theobald. 
The  fiercest  and  finest  of  Pope's  satires,  it  closes  his 
second  period  which  breathes  the  savageness  of  Swift. 
The  third  phase  of  Pope's  literary  life  was  closely  linked 
to  his  friend  Bolingbroke.  It  was  in  conversation  with 
him  that  he  originated  the  Essay  on  Man  (1732-4)  and 
the  Imitations  of  Horace.  The  Moral  Essays,  or  Epis- 
tles to  men  and  women,  were  written  to  praise  those 
whom  he  loved,  and  to  satirise  the  bad  poets  and  the 
social  foUies  of  the  day,  and  all  who  disUked  him  or  his 
party.  Among  these,  who  has  not  read  the  Epistle  to 
Dr.  Arbuthnot  ?  In  the  last  few  years  of  his  life,  Bishop 
Warburton,  the  writer  of  the  Legation  of  Moses  and 
editor  of  Shakespeare,  helped  him  to  fit  the  Moral 
Essays  into  the  plan  of  which  the  Essay  on  Man  formed 


1 86  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

part.  Warburton  was  Pope's  last  great  friend;  but 
almost  his  only  old  friend.  By  1740  neariy  all  the 
members  of  his  literary  circle  were  dead,  and  a  new 
race  of  poets  and  writers  had  grown  up.  In  1 744  he 
died.  His  Elegy  on  an  Unfortunate  Lady  and  the 
Epistle  of  Eloisa  to  Abelard  show  how  he  once  tried 
to  handle  the  passions  of  sorrow  and  love.  The  mas- 
terly form  into  which  he  threw  the  philosophical  prin- 
ciples he  condensed  into  didactic  poetry  make  them 
more  impressive  than  they  have  a  right  to  be.  The 
Essay  on  Man,  though  its  philosophy  is  poor  and  not 
his  own,  is  crowded  with  lines  that  have  passed  into 
daily  use.  The  Essay  on  Criticism  is  equally  full  of 
critical  precepts  put  with  exquisite  skill.  The  Satires 
and  Epistles  are  didactic,  but  their  excellence  is  in  the 
terse  and  finished  types  of  character,  in  the  almost  cre- 
ative drawing  of  which  Pope  remains  unrivalled,  even  by 
Dryden.  His  translation  of  Homer  resembles  Homer 
as  much  as  London  resembled  Troy,  or  Marlborough 
Achilles,  or  Queen  Anne  Hecuba.  It  is  done  with  great 
literary  art,  but  for  that  very  reason  it  does  not  make  us 
feel  the  simplicity  and  directness  of  his  original.  It  has 
neither  the  manner  nor  the  spirit  of  the  Greek,  just  as 
Pope's  descriptions  of  nature  have  neither  the  manner 
nor  the  spirit  of  nature.  The  heroic  couplet,  in  which  he 
wrote  nearly  all  his  work,  he  used  with  a  correctness  that 
has  never  been  surpassed,  but  its  smooth  perfection,  at 
length,  wearies  the  ear.  It  wants  the  breaks  that  passion 
and  imagination  naturally  make.     Finally,  he  had  the 


VI  RESTORATION    TO    DEATH    OF    POPE  1 8/ 

spirit  of  an  artist,  hating  those  who  degraded  his  art,  and 
at  a  time  when  men  followed  it  for  money,  and  place, 
and  the  applause  of  the  club  and  of  the  town,  he  loved 
it  faithfully  to  the  end,  for  its  own  sake. 

119.  The  Minor  Poets  who  surrounded  Pope  in  the 
first  two-thirds  of  his  life  did  not  approach  his  genius. 
Richard  Blackmore  endeavoured  to  restore  the  epic  in 
his  Prince  Arthur,  1695,  and  Samuel  Garth's  mock  heroic 
poem  of  the  Dispensary  appeared  along  with  John  Pom- 
fret's  poems  in  1699.  In  1701,  Defoe's  Trueborn  Eng- 
lishman defended  William  III.  against  those  who  said  he 
was  a  foreigner,  and  Prior's  finest  ode,  the  Carmen  Secu- 
lare,  took  up  the  same  cause.  John  Philips  is  known  by 
his  Miltonic  burlesque  of  The  Splendid  Shilling,  and  his 
Cyder  was  a  Georgic  of  the  apple.  Matthew  Green's 
Spleen  and  Ambrose  Philip's  Pastorals  were  contempo- 
rary with  Pope's  first  poetry ;  and  John  Gay's  Shepherd's 
Week,  six  pastorals,  1714,  were  as  lightly  wrought  as  his 
famous  Fables.  He  had  a  true  vein  of  happy  song,  and 
Black-eyed  Susan  remains  with  the  Beggars'  Opera  to 
please  us  still.  The  poUtical  poems  of  Swift  were  coarse, 
but  always  hit  home.  Addison  celebrated  the  Battle  of 
Blenheim  in  the  Campaign,  and  his  cultivated  grace  is 
found  in  some  devotional  pieces.  On  his  death  Thomas 
Tickell  made  a  noble  elegy.  Prior's  charming  ease  is 
best  shown  in  the  light  narrative  poetry  which  we  may  say 
began  with  him  in  the  reign  of  William  III.  In  Pope's 
later  life  a  new  and  quickening  impulse  came  upon  poetry, 
and  changed  it  root  and  branch.     It  arose  in  Ramsay's 


l88  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Gentle  Shepherd,  1725,  and  in  Thomson's  Seasons,  1730, 
and  it  rang  the  knell  of  the  manner  and  the  spirit  of  the 
critical  school. 

120.  The  Prose  Literature  of  Pope's  time  collects 
itself  round  four  great  names,  Swift,  Defoe,  Addison,  and 
Bishop  Berkeley,  and  they  all  exhibit  those  elements  of 
the  age  of  which  I  have  spoken.  Jonathan  Swift  was 
the  keenest  of  political  partisans,  for  his  fierce  and 
earnest  personality  made  everything  he  did  impassioned. 
But  he  was  far  more  than  a  partisan.  He  was  the  most 
original  prose  writer  of  his  time  —  the  man  of  genius  among 
many  men  of  talent.  It  was  not  till  he  was  thirty  years 
old,  1697,  that  he  wrote  the  Battle  of  the  Books,  concern- 
ing the  so-called  Letters  of  Phalaris,  and  the  Tale  of  a 
Tub,  a  satire  on  the  Dissenters,  the  Papists,  and  even  the 
Church  of  England.  These  books,  published  in  1704, 
made  his  reputation.  He  soon  became  the  finest  and 
most  copious  writer  of  pamphlets  England  had  ever 
known.  At  first  he  supported  the  Whigs,  but  left  them 
for  the  new  Tory  party  in  1710,  and  his  tracts  brought 
him  court  favour,  while  his  literary  fame  was  increased 
by  many  witty  letters,  poems,  and  arguments.  On  the 
fall  of  the  Tory  party  at  the  accession  of  George  I.,  17 14, 
he  retired  to  the  Deanery  of  St.  Patrick  in  Ireland,  an 
embittered  man,  and  the  Drapier's  Letters,  1724,  writ- 
ten against  Wood's  halfpence,  gained  him  popularity  in 
a  country  that  he  hated.  In  1726  his  inventive  genius, 
his  savage  satire,  and  his  cruel  indignation  with  life  were 
all  shown  in  Gulliver's  Travels.     The  voyage  to  Lilliput 


VI       RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE     1 89 

and  Brobdingnag  satirised  the  politics  and  manners  of 
England  and  Europe ;  that  to  Laputa  mocked  the  philoso- 
phers ;  and  the  last,  to  the  country  of  the  Houyhnhnms, 
lacerated  and  defiled  the  whole  body  of  humanity.  No 
English  is  more  robust  than  Swift's,  no  life  in  private 
and  public  more  sad  and  proud,  no  death  more  pitiable. 
He  died  in  1745  hopelessly  insane.  Daniel  DEFOE'a 
vein  as  a  pamphleteer  seems  to  have  been  inexhaustible, 
and  the  style  of  his  tracts  was  as  roughly  persuasive  as 
it  was  popular.  Above  all  he  was  the  journalist.  His 
Review,  published  twice  a  week  for  a  year,  was  wholly 
written  by  himself;  but  he  "founded,  conducted,  and 
wrote  for  a  host  of  other  newspapers,"  and  filled  them 
with  every  subject  of  the  day.  His  tales  grew  out  of 
matters  treated  of  in  his  journals,  and  his  best  art  lay 
in  the  way  he  built  up  these  stories  out  of  mere  sug- 
gestions. "The  little  art  he  is  truly  master  of,"  said  one 
of  his  contemporaries,  "  is  of  forging  a  story  and  impos- 
ing it  on  the  world  for  truth."  His  circumstantial  inven- 
tion, combined  with  a  style  which  exactly  fits  it  by  its 
simplicity,  is  the  root  of  the  charm  of  the  great  story 
by  which  he  chiefly  lives  in  literature.  Robinson  Crusoe, 
1 719,  equalled  Gulliver's  Travels  in  truthful  representa- 
tion, and  excelled  them  in  invention.  The  story  lives 
and  charms  from  day  to  day.  But  none  of  his  stories 
are  real  novels ;  that  is,  they  have  no  plot  to  the  working 
out  of  which  the  characters  and  the  events  contribute. 
They  form  the  transition,  however,  from  the  slight  tale 
and  the  romance  of  the  EUzabethan  time  to  the  finished 
novel  of  Richardson  and  Fielding. 


IQO  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

121.  Metaphysical  Literature,  which  drifted  into  the- 
ology, was  enriched  by  the  work  of  Bishop  Berkeley. 
The  Platonic  dialogue  of  Hylas  and  Philonous,  17 13, 
charms  us  even  more  than  his  subtle  and  elastic  Siris, 
1 744.  These  books,  with  Alciphron,  the  Minute  Philoso- 
pher, 1732,  questioned  the  real  existence  of  matter, — 
"no  idea  can  exist,"  he  said,  "out  of  the  mind,"  —  and 
founded  on  the  denial  of  it  an  answer  to  the  English 
Deists,  round  whom  in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  centred  the  struggle  between  the  claims  of  nat- 
ural and  revealed  religion.  The  influence  of  Shaftes- 
bury's Characteristics,  1711,  was  far  more  literary  than 
metaphysical.  He  condemned  metaphysics,  but  his  phi- 
losophy, such  as  it  was,  inspired  Pope,  and  his  cultivated 
thinking  on  several  subjects  made  many  writers  in  the 
next  generation  care  for  beauty  and  grace.  He,  like 
Bolingbroke,  and  WoUaston,  Tindal,  Toland,  and  Collins, 
on  the  Deists'  side,  were  opposed  by  Samuel  Clark,  by 
Bentley,  by  Bishop  Butler,  and  by  Bishop  Warburton. 
Bishop  Butler's  acute  and  solid  reasoning  treated  in 
his  Sermons  the  subject  of  Morals,  inquiring  what  was 
the  particular  nature  of  man,  and  hence  determining  the 
course  of  life  correspondent  to  this  nature.  His  Analogy 
of  Religion,  Natural  and  Revealed,  to  the  Constitution  and 
Course  of  Nature,  1736,  endeavours  to  make  peace  be- 
tween authority  and  reason,  and  has  become  a  standard 
book.  I  may  mention  here  a  social  satire,  The  Fable  of 
the  Bees,  by  Mandeville,  half-poem,  half-prose  dialogue, 
and  finished  in  1729.    It  tried  to  prove  that  the  vices 


VI  RESTORATION    TO    DEATH   OF   POPE  I9I 

of  society  are  the  foundation  of  civilisation,  and  is  one 
of  the  first  of  a  new  set  of  books  which  marked  the  rise 
in  England  of  the  bold  speculations  on  the  nature  and 
ground  of  society  to  which  the  French  Revolution  gave 
afterwards  so  great  an  impulse. 

122.  The  Periodical  Essay  is  connected  with  the 
names  of  Joseph  Addison  and  Sir  Richard  Steele. 
The  gay,  light,  graceful,  literary  Essay,  differing  from 
such  Essays  as  Bacon's  as  good  conversation  about  a 
subject  differs  from  a  clear  analysis  of  all  its  points,  was 
begun  in  France  by  Montaigne  in  1580.  Charles  Cot- 
ton, a  wit  of  Charles  11. 's  time,  retranslated  Montaigne's 
Essays,  and  they  soon  found  imitators  in  Cowley  and 
Sir  W.  Temple.  But  the  periodical  Essay  was  created 
by  Steele  and  Addison.  It  was  at  first  published  three 
times  a  week,  then  daily,  and  it  was  anonymous,  and 
both  these  characters  necessarily  changed  its  form  from 
that  of  an  essay  by  Montaigne.  Steele  began  it  in  the 
Tatier,  1 709,  and  it  treated  of  everything  that  was  going 
on  in  the  town.  He  paints  as  a  social  humourist  the 
whole  age  of  Queen  Anne  —  the  political  and  literary 
disputes,  the  fine  gentlemen  and  ladies,  the  characters 
of  men,  the  humours  of  society,  the  new  book,  the  new 
play ;  we  live  in  the  very  streets  and  drawing-rooms  of 
old  London.  Addison  soon  joined  him,  first  in  the  Tat- 
ier, afterwards  in  the  Spectator,  171 1.  His  work  is  more 
critical,  literary,  and  didactic  than  his  companion's.  The 
characters  he  introduces,  such  as  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley, 
are  finished  studies  after  nature.    The  humour  is  very 


192  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

fine  and  tender ;  and,  like  Chaucer's,  it  is  never  bitter. 
The  style  adds  to  the  charm :  in  its  varied  cadence  and 
subtle  ease  it  has  not  been  surpassed  within  its  own 
peculiar  sphere  in  England ;  and  it  seems  to  grow  out 
of  the  subjects  treated  of,  Addison's  work  was  a  great 
one,  lightly  done.  The  Spectator,  the  Guardian,  and  the 
Freeholder,  in  his  hands,  gave  a  better  tone  to  manners, 
and  hence  to  morals,  and  a  gentler  one  to  political  and 
literary  criticism.  The  essays  published  every  Friday 
were  chiefly  on  literary  subjects,  the  Saturday  essays 
chiefly  on  religious  subjects.  The  former  popularised 
literature,  so  that  culture  spread  among  the  middle 
classes  and  crept  down  to  the  country ;  the  latter  popu- 
larised religion.  "  I  have  brought,"  he  says, "  philosophy 
out  of  closets  and  libraries,  schools  and  colleges,  to  dwell 
in  clubs  and  assemblies,  at  tea-tables  and  in  coffee-houses." 

THE   DRAMA,    FROM  THE    RESTORATION    TO    1 780 

123.  The  Drama  after  the  Restoration  took  the  tone 
of  the  court  both  in  politics  and  religion,  but  its  partisan- 
ship decayed  under  William  III.,  and  died  in  the  reign 
of  Queen  Anne.  The  court  of  Charles  II.,  which  the 
plays  now  written  represented  much  more  than  they  did 
the  national  life,  gave  the  drama  the  "genteel"  ease 
and  the  immorality  of  its  society,  and  encouraged  it 
to  find  new  impulses  from  the  tragedy  and  comedy  of 
Spain  and  of  France.  The  French  romances  of  the 
school  of  Calpren^de  and  Scud^ry  furnished  plots  to 
the  playwriters.     The  great  French  dramatists,  Corneille, 


VI       RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE     I93 

Racine,  and  Moli^re,  were  translated  and  borrowed  from 
again  and  again.  The  "  three  unities  "  of  Corneille,  and 
rhyme  instead  of  blank  verse  as  the  vehicle  of  tragedy, 
were  adopted,  but  "  the  spirit  of  neither  the  serious  nor 
the  comic  drama  of  France  could  then  be  transplanted 
into  England." 

Two  acting  companies  were  formed  on  Charles  II. 's 
return,  under  Thomas  Killigrew  and  Davenant ;  actresses 
came  on  the  stage  for  the  first  time,  the  ballet  was  intro- 
duced, and  scenery  began  to  be  largely  used.  Dryden, 
whose  masterly  force  was  sure  to  strike  the  key-note  that 
others  followed,  began  his  comedies  in  1663,  but  turned 
to  tragedy  in  the  Indian  Queen,  1664.  This  play,  with 
the  Indian  Emperour,  established  for  fourteen  years  the 
rhymed  couplet  as  the  dramatic  verse.  His  defence  of 
rhyme  in  the  Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesy  asserted  the 
originality  of  the  English  school,  and  denied  that  it  fol- 
lowed the  French.  The  Maiden  Queen,  1667,  brought 
him  new  fame,  and  then  Tyrannic  Love  and  the  Con- 
quest of  Granada,  1672,  induced  the  burlesque  of  the 
Rehearsal,  written  by  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  in  which 
the  bombastic  extravagance  of  these  heroic  plays  was 
ridiculed.  Dryden  now  changed,  in  1678,  his  dramatic 
manner,  and  following  Shakespeare,  "disencumbered 
himself  from  rhyme"  in  his  fine  tragedy  oi  All  for  Love, 
and  showed  what  power  he  had  of  low  comedy  in  the 
Spanish  Friar.  After  the  Revolution,  his  tragedy  of 
Don  Sebastian  ranks  high,  but  not  higher  than  his  brill- 
iantly written  comedy  of  Amphitryon,  1690.     Dryden  is 


194  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP, 

the  representative  dramatist  of  the  Restoration.  Among 
the  tragedians  who  followed  his  method  and  possessed 
their  own,  those  most  worthy  of  notice  are  Nat  Lee, 
whose  Rival  Queens,  1667,  deserves  its  praise;  Thomas 
Otway,  whose  two  pathetic  tragedies,  the  Orphan  and 
Venice  Preserved,  still  keep  the  stage ;  Thomas  Sou  theme 
whose  Fatal  Marriage,  1694,  was  revived  by  Garrick; 
and  Congreve  who  once  turned  from  comedy  to  write 
The  Mourning  Bride. 

It  was  in  comedy,  however,  that  the  dramatists  ex- 
celled. Sir  George  Etherege  originated  with  great  skill 
the  new  comedy  of  England  with  She  Would  if  She 
Could,  1668.  Sedley,  Mrs.  Behn,  Lacy,  and  Shadwell 
carry  on  to  the  Revolution  that  light  Comedy  of  Man- 
ners which  William  Wycherley's  gross  vigour  and  natural 
plots  lifted  into  an  odious  excellence  in  such  plays  as  the 
Country  Wife  and  the  Plain  Dealer.  Three  great  come- 
dians followed  Wycherley  —  William  Congreve,  whose 
well-bred  ease  is  almost  as  remarkable  as  his  brilliant 
wit ;  Sir  John  Vanbrugh,  and  George  Farquhar,  both  of 
whom  have  quick  invention,  gaiety,  dash,  and  sincerity. 
The  indecency  of  all  these  writers  belongs  to  the  time, 
but  it  is  partly  forgotten  in  their  swift  and  sustained 
vivacity.  This  immorality  produced  Jeremy  Collier's 
famous  attack  on  the  stage,  1698;  and  the  growth  of 
a  higher  tone  in  society,  uniting  with  this  attack,  began 
to  purify  the  drama,  though  Mrs.  Centlivre's  comedies, 
during  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne,  show  no  love  of  purity. 
Steele,  at  this  time,  whose  Lying  Lover  makes  him  the 


VI       RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE     1 95 

father  of  Sentimental  comedy,  wrote  all  his  plays  with 
a  moral  purpose.  Nicholas  Rowe,  whose  melancholy 
tragedies  "  are  occupied  with  themes  of  heroic  love,"  is 
dull,  but  never  gross  ;  while  Addison's  ponderous  tragedy 
of  Cafo,  1 713,  praised  by  Voltaire  as  the  first  tragedie 
raisonnable,  marks,  in  its  total  rejection  of  the  drama  of 
nature  for  the  classical  style,  "  a  definite  epoch  in  the 
history  of  English  tragedy,  an  epoch  of  decay,  on  which 
no  recovery  has  followed."  Comedy,  however,  had  still 
a  future.  The  Beggars'  Opera  of  Gay,  1728,  revived  an 
old  form  of  drama  in  a  new  way.  CoUey  Gibber  carried 
on  into  George  II.'s  time  the  hght  and  the  sentimental 
comedy ;  Fielding  made  the  stage  the  vehicle  of  criticism 
on  the  follies,  literature,  and  politics  of  his  time ;  and  Foote 
and  Garrick  did  the  same  kind  of  work  in  their  farces. 

The  influence  of  the  Restoration  drama  continues,  past 
this  period,  in  the  manner  of  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan 
who  wrote  between  1768  and  1778;  but  the  lambent 
humour  of  Goldsmith's  Good-natured  Man  and  She 
Stoops  to  Conquer,  and  the  wit,  almost  as  brilliant  and 
more  epigrammatic  than  Congreve's,  of  Sheridan's  Rivals 
and  the  School  for  Scandal,  are  not  deformed  by  the 
indecency  of  the  Restoration.  Both  were  Irishmen,  but 
Goldsmith  has  more  of  the  Celtic  grace  and  Sheridan 
of  the  Celtic  wit.  The  sentimental  comedy  was  carried 
on  into  the  next  age  by  Macklin,  Murphy,  Cumberland, 
the  Colmans,  and  many  others,  but  we  may  say  that  with 
Sheridan  the  history  of  the  elder  English  Drama  closes. 
That  which  belongs  to  our  century  is  a  different  thing. 


196  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 


CHAPTER  VII 

PROSE    LITERATURE     FROM    THE    DEATH    OF    POPE    AND    OF 
SWIFT    TO    THE     FRENCH     REVOLUTION,    AND     FROM     THE 
FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  THE  DEATH  OF   SCOTT 
1745-I 789-1832 

124.  Prose  Literature.  — The  rapid  increase  of  manu- 
factures, science,  and  prosperity  which  began  with  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  paralleled  by  the 
growth  of  Literature.  The  general  causes  of  this  growth 
were  — 

I  St,  That  a  good  prose  style  had  been  perfected ^  and 
the  method  of  writing  being  made  easy,  production  in- 
creased. Men  were  bom,  as  it  were,  into  a  good  school 
of  the  art  of  composition. 

2ndly,  The  long  peace  after  the  accession  of  the  House 
of  Hanover  had  left  England  at  rest,  and  given  it  wealth. 
The  reclaiming  of  waste  tracts,  the  increased  population 
and  trade,  made  better  communication  necessary;  and 
the  country  was  soon  covered  with  a  network  of  high- 
ways. The  leisure  gave  time  to  men  to  think  and 
write;  the  quicker  interchange  between  the  capital  and 
the  country  spread  over  England  the  literature  of  the 
capital,  and   stirred   men   everywhere   to   express   their 


VII  PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    174$   TO    1789       I97 

thoughts.  The  coaching  services  and  the  post  carried 
the  new  book  and  the  literary  criticism  to  the  villages, 
and  awpke  the  men  of  talent  there,  who  might  otherwise 
have  been  silent. 

3rdly,  The  Press  sent  far  and  wide  the  news  of  the 
day,  and  grew  in  importance  till  it  contained  the  opinions 
and  writings  of  men  like  Johnson.  Such  seed  produced 
literary  work  in  the  country.  Newspapers  now  began 
to  play  a  larger  part  in  literature.  They  rose  under  the 
Commonwealth,  but  became  important  when  the  censor- 
ship which  reduced  them  to  a  mere  broadsheet  of  news 
was  removed  after  the  Revolution  of  1688.  The  politi- 
cal sleep  of  the  age  of  the  two  first  Georges  hindered 
their  progress ;  but  in  the  reign  of  George  III.,  after  a 
struggle  with  which  the  name  of  John  Wilkes  and  the 
author  of  the  Letters  of  Junius  are  connected,  and 
which  lasted  from  1764  to  1771,  the  press  claimed  and 
obtained  the  right  to  criticise  the  conduct  and  measures 
of  ministers  and  the  king;  and  the  further  right  to 
publish  and  comment  on  the  debates  in  the  two  Houses. 

4thly,  Communication  with  the  Continent  had  in- 
creased during  the  peaceable  times  of  Walpole,  and 
the  wars  that  followed  made  it  still  more  common. 
With  its  increase  two  new  and  great  outbursts  of  litera- 
ture told  upon  England.  France  sent  the  works  of 
Montesquieu,  of  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Diderot,  D'Alem- 
bert,  and  the  rest  of  the  liberal  thinkers  who  were 
called  the  Encyclopaedists,  to  influence  and  quicken 
English  literature  on  all  the  great  subjects  that  belong 


198  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP, 

to  the  social  and  political  life  of  man.  Afterwards, 
the  fresh  German  movement,  led  by  Lessing  and  others, 
and  carried  on  by  Goethe  and  Schiller,  added  its  impulse 
to  the  poetical  school  that  arose  in  England  along  with 
the  French  Revolution.  These  were  the  general  causes 
of  the  rapid  growth  of  literature  from  the  time  of  the 
death  of  Swift  and  of  Pope. 

125.  Prose  Literature  between  1745  and  the  French 
Revolution  may  be  said  to  be  bound  up  with  the  literary 
lives  of  one  man  and  his  friends.  Samuel  Johnson, 
born  in  1709,  and  whose  first  important  prose  work, 
the  Life  of  Savage,  appeared  in  1744,  was  the  last 
representative  of  the  literary  king,  who,  like  Dryden 
and  Pope,  held  a  court  in  London.  Poor  and  un- 
known, he  worked  his  way  to  fame,  and  his  first  poem, 
the  London,  1738,  satirised  the  town  where  he  loved  to 
live.  His  longer  and  better  poem.  The  Vanity  of 
Human  Wishes,  was  published  in  1749,  and  his  moral 
power  was  never  better  shown  than  in  its  weighty  verse. 
His  one  play,  Irene,  was  acted  in  the  same  year.  He 
carried  on  the  periodical  essays  in  the  Rambler,  1750-2, 
but  in  it,  as  afterwards  in  the  Idler,  grace  and  lightness, 
the  essence  of  this  kind  of  essay,  were  lost.  Driven 
by  poverty,  Johnson  undertook  a  greater  work :  the 
Dictionary  of  the  English  Language,  1755,  and  his 
celebrated  letter  to  Lord  Chesterfield,  concerning  its 
publication,  gave  the  death-blow  to  patronage,  and 
makes  Johnson  the  first  of  the  modern  Uterary  men 
who,  independent  of  patrons,  live  by  their  pen  and  find 


Vli  PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1 745   TO    1789       1 99 

in  the  public  their  only  paymaster.  He  represents  thus 
a  new  class.  In  1759  he  set  on  foot  the  Didactic  Novel 
in  Rasselas.  For  a  time  he  was  one  of  the  political 
pamphleteers,  from  1770  to  1776.  As  he  drew  near  to 
his  death  his  Lives  of  the  Poets  appeared  as  prefaces 
to  his  edition  of  the  poets  in  1781,  and  lifted  biography 
into  a  higher  place  in  literature.  But  he  did  even  more 
for  literature  as  a  converser,  as  the  chief  talker  of  a 
literary  club,  than  by  writing,  and  we  know  exactly  what 
a  power  he  was  by  the  vivid  Biography,  the  best  in  our 
language,  which  James  Boswell,  with  fussy  devotedness, 
made  of  his  master  in  1791.  Side  by  side  with  Johnson 
stands  Oliver  Goldsmith,  whose  graceful  and  pure 
English  is  a  pleasant  contrast  to  the  loaded  Latinism  of 
Johnson's  style.  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  the  History 
of  Animated  Nature,  are  at  one  in  charm,  and  the 
latter  is  full  of  that  love  of  natural  scenery,  the  senti- 
ment of  which  is  absent  from  Johnson's  Journey  to 
the  Western  Isles.  Both  these  men  were  masters  of 
Miscellaneous  Literature,  and  in  that  class,  I  mention 
here,  as  belonging  to  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  Edmund  Burke's  Vindication  of  Natural  So- 
ciety, a  parody  of  Bolingbroke;  and  his  Inquiry  into 
the  Origin  of  our  Ideas  of  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful, 
a  book  which  in  1 75  7  introduced  him  to  Johnson.  Nor 
ought  we  to  forget  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  another  of 
Johnson's  friends,  who  first  made  EngUsh  art  literary 
in  his  Discourses  on  Painting;  nor  Horace  Walpole, 
whose    Anecdotes    of  Painting,    1762-71,   still    please; 


206  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHA>. 

and  whose  familiar  Letters,  malicious,  light  as  froth,  but 
amusing,  retail  with  liveliness  all  the  gossip  of  the  time. 
Among  all  these  books  on  the  intellectual  subjects  of  life 
arose  to  delight  the  lovers  of  quiet  and  the  country  the 
Natural  History  of  Selborne,  by  Gilbert  White.  His 
seeing  eye  and  gentle  heart  are  imaged  in  his  fresh 
and  happy  style. 

126.  The  Novel. —  "There  is  more  knowledge  of  the 
heart,"  said  Johnson,  "  in  one  letter  of  Richardson's  than 
in  all  Tom  Jones"  and  the  saying  introduces  Samuel 
Richardson  and  Henry  Fielding,  the  makers  of  the 
modern  novel.  Wholly  distinct  from  merely  narrative 
stories  like  Defoe's,  the  true  novel  is  a  story  wrought 
round  the  passion  of  love  to  a  tragic  or  joyous  conclusion. 
But  the  name  is  applied  now  to  any  story  of  human  life 
which  is  woven  by  the  action  of  characters  or  of  events 
on  characters  to  a  chosen  conclusion.  Its  form,  far  more 
flexible  than  that  of  the  drama,  admits  of  almost  infinite 
development.  The  whole  of  human  life,  at  any  time,  at 
any  place  in  the  world,  is  its  subject,  and  its  vast  sphere 
accounts  for  its  vast  production.  Pamela,  1741,  appeared 
while  Pope  was  yet  alive,  and  was  the  first  of  Richardson's 
novels.  Like  Clarissa  Harlowe,  1748,  it  was  written  in 
the  form  of  letters.  The  third  of  these  books  was  Sir 
Charles  Grandison.  They  are  novels  of  Sentiment,  and 
their  purposeful  morality  and  reUgion  mark  the  change 
which  had  taken  place  in  the  morals  and  faith  of  litera- 
ture since  the  preceding  age. 

Clarissa  Harlowe  is  a  masterpiece  in  its  kind.     Rich- 


Vll  1»R0SE   LITERATURE    FROM    1 745    TO    1789      201 

ardson  himself  is  mastered  day  by  day  by  the  passionate 
creation  of  his  characters  :  and  their  variety  and  the 
variety  of  their  feelings  are  drawn  with  a  slow,  diffusive, 
elaborate  intensity  which  penetrates  into  the  subtlest 
windings  of  the  human  heart.  But  all  the  characters  are 
grouped  round  and  enlighten  Clarissa,  the  pure  and 
ideal  star  of  womanhood.  The  pathos  of  the  book,  its 
sincerity,  its  minute  reality,  have  always,  but  slowly,  im- 
passioned its  readers,  and  it  stirred  as  absorbing  an 
interest  in  France  as  it  did  in  England.  "Take  care," 
said  Diderot,  "  not  to  open  these  enchanting  books,  if 
you  have  any  duties  to  fulfil."  Henry  Fielding  followed 
Pamela  with  Joseph  Andrews,  1742,  and  Clarissa  with 
Tom  Jones,  1749.  At  the  same  time,  in  1748,  appeared 
Tobias  Smollett's  first  novel,  Roderick  Random.  Both 
wrote  many  other  stories,  but  in  the  natural  growth  and 
development  of  the  story,  and  in  the  infitting  of  the 
characters  and  events  towards  the  conclusion,  Tom 
Jones  is  said  to  be  the  English  model  of  the  novel.  The 
constructive  power  of  Fielding  is  absent  from  Smollett, 
but  in  inventive  tale-telling  and  in  cynical  characterisa- 
tion, he  is  not  easily  equalled.  Fielding,  a  master  of 
observing  and  of  recording  what  he  observed,  draws 
English  life  both  in  town  and  country  with  a  coarse  and 
realistic  pencil :  Smollett  is  led  beyond  the  truth  of 
nature  into  caricature.  Ten  years  had  thus  sufficed  to 
create  a  wholly  new ,  literature. 

Laurence  Sterne  published  the  first  part  of  Tristram 
Shandy  m  the  same  year  as  Rasselas,  1759.     Tristram 


202  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Shandy  and  the  Sentimental  Journey  are  scarcely  novels. 
They  have  no  plot,  they  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  any 
story.  The  story  of  Tristrajn  Shandy  wanders  like  a 
man  in  a  labyrinth,  and  the  humour  is  as  labyrinthine 
as  the  story.  It  is  carefully  invented,  and  whimsically 
subtle ;  and  the  sentiment  is  sometimes  true,  but  mostly 
affected.  But  a  certain  unity  is  given  to  the  book  by  the 
admirable  consistency  of  the  characters.  A  little  later,  in 
1766,  Goldsmith's  Vicar  of  Wakefield  was  the  first  and, 
perhaps,  the  most  charming,  of  all  those  novels  which  we 
may  call  idyllic,  which  describe  in  a  pure  and  gentle  style 
the  simple  loves  and  lives  of  country  people.  Lastly,  but 
still  in  the  same  circle  of  Johnson's  friends.  Miss  Bumey's 
Evelina,  t-II^,  and  her  Cecilia,  in  which  we  detect  John- 
son's Roman  hand,  were  the  first  novels  of  society. 

127.  History  shared  in  the  progress  made  after  1745 
in  prose  writing,  and  was  raised  into  the  rank  of  literature 
by  three  of  Johnson's  contemporaries.  All  of  them  were 
influenced  by  the  French  school,  by  Montesquieu  and 
Voltaire.  David  Hume's  History  of  England,  finished 
in  1 761,  is,  in  the  writer's  endeavour  to  make  it  a  philo- 
sophic whole,  in  its  clearness  of  narrative  and  purity  of 
style,  our  first  literary  history.  But  he  is  neither  exact, 
nor  does  he  care  to  be  exact.  He  does  not  love  his  sub- 
ject, and  he  wants  sympathy  with  mankind  and  with  his 
country.  His  manner  is  the  manner  of  Voltaire,  passion- 
less, keen,  and  elegant.  Dr.  Robertson,  Hume's  friend, 
was  a  careful  and  serious  but  also  a  cold  writer.  His 
histories   of  Scotland,  of  Charles  V.,  and   of  America 


vn  PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1 745    TO    1 789       203 

show  how  historical  interest  again  began  to  reach  beyond 
England.  Edward  Gibbon,  whose  Decline  and  Fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire^  completed  in  1 788,  gave  a  new  im- 
pulse and  a  new  model  to  historical  literature,  had  no 
more  sympathy  with  humanity  than  Hume,  and  his  irony 
lowers  throughout  the  human  value  of  his  history.  But 
he  had  creative  power,  originality,  and  the  enjoyment  and 
imagination  of  his  subject.  It  was  at  Rome  in  1 764,  while 
musing  amid  the  ruins  of  the  Capitol,  that  the  idea  of 
writing  his  book  arose  in  his  mind,  and  his  conception 
of  the  work  was  that  of  an  artist.  Rome,  eastern  and 
western,  was  painted  in  the  centre  of  the  world,  dying 
slowly  like  a  lion  in  his  cave.  Around  it  and  towards  it  he 
drew  all  the  nations  and  hordes  and  faiths  that  wrought 
its  ruin ;  told  their  stories  from  the  beginning,  and  the  re- 
sults on  themselves  and  on  the  world  of  their  victories  over 
Rome.  This  imaginative  conception,  together  with  the 
collecting  and  use  of  every  detail  of  the  arts,  literature, 
customs,  and  manners  of  the  times  he  described,  the  read- 
ing and  use  of  all  the  contemporary  literature,  the  careful 
geographical  detail,  the  marshalling  of  all  this  information 
into  his  narration  and  towards  his  conclusion,  the  power 
with  which  he  moved  over  this  vast  arena,  and  the  use  of 
a  full  if  too  grandiose  a  style  to  give  importance  to  his 
subject,  makes  him  the  one  historian  of  the  eighteenth 
century  whom  modern  research  recognises  as  its  master. 
128.  Philosophical  and  Political  Literature.  —  Hutch- 
eson,  Hartley,  and  Reid  were  inferior  as  philosophers 
to  David  Hume,  who  inquired,  while  he  followed  Locke, 


204  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

into  the  nature  of  the  human  understanding,  and  based 
philosophy  upon  psychology.  He  constructed  a  science 
of  man;  and  finally  limited  all  our  knowledge  to  the 
world  of  phenomena  revealed  to  us  by  experience.  In 
morals  he  made  utility  the  only  measure  of  virtue.  The 
first  of  his  books,  the  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  1 739, 
was  written  in  France,  and  was  followed  by  the  Inquiry 
concerning  the  Principles  of  Morals  in  1751.  The  Dia- 
logues on  Natural  Religion  were  not  published  till  after 
his  death.  These  were  his  chief  philosophical  works. 
But  in  1 741-2,  he  had  published  two  volumes  oi  Essays 
Moral  and  Political,  from  which  we  might  infer  a  politi- 
cal philosophy ;  and  in  1752  the  Political  Discourses  ap- 
peared, and  they  have  been  fairly  said  to  be  the  cradle 
of  political  economy.  But  that  subject  was  afterwards 
taken  up  by  Adam  Smith,  a  friend  of  Hume's,  whose 
book  on  the  Moral  Sentiments,  1759,  classes  him  also 
with  the  philosophers  of  Scotland.  In  his  Wealth  of 
Nations,  illd,  by  its  theory  that  labour  is  the  source  of 
wealth,  and  that  to  give  the  labourer  absolute  freedom  to 
pursue  his  own  interest  in  his  own  way  is  the  best  means 
of  increasing  the  wealth  of  the  country ;  by  its  proof  that 
all  laws  made  to  restrain,  or  to  shape,  or  to  promote  com- 
merce, were  stumbling-blocks  in  the  way  of  the  wealth 
of  a  state,  he  created  the  Science  of  Political  Economy, 
and  brought  the  theory  of  Free  Trade  into  practice.  All 
the  questions  of  labour  and  capital  were  now  placed  on  a 
scientific  basis,  and  since  that  time  the  literature  of  the 
whole  of  the  subject  has  engaged  great  thinkers.     As  the 


VII  PROSE   LITERATURE    FROM    1745    TO    1 789       20$ 

immense  increase  of  the  industry,  wealth,  and  commerce 
of  the  country  from  1720  to  1770  had  thus  stirred  inquiry 
into  the  laws  which  regulate  wealth,  so  now  the  Metho- 
dist movement,  beginning  in  1738,  awoke  an  interest  in 
the  poor,  and  gave  the  first  impulse  to  popular  education. 
Social  Reform  became  a  literary  subject,  and  fills  a  large 
space  until  1832,  when  political  reform  brought  forward 
new  subjects,  and  the  old  subjects  under  new  forms. 
This  new  philanthropy  was  stirred  into  further  growth 
by  the  theories  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  these 
theories,  taking  violent  effect  in  France,  roused  into 
opposition  the  genius  of  Edmund  Burke.  Unlike  Hume, 
whose  politics  were  elaborated  in  the  study,  Burke  wrote 
his  political  tracts  and  speeches  face  to  face  with  events 
and  upon  them.  Philosophical  reasoning  and  poetic 
passion  were  wedded  together  in  them  on  the  side  of 
Conservatism,  and  every  art  of  eloquence  was  used  with 
the  mastery  that  imagination  gives.  In  1766  he  defended 
Lord  Rockingham's  administration ;  he  was  then  wrongly 
suspected  of  the  authorship  of  the  Letters  of  Junius, 
political  invectives  (1769-72),  whose  trenchant  style  has 
preserved  them  to  this  day.  Burke's  Thoughts  on  the 
Cause  of  the  Present  Discontents,  1770,  maintained  an 
aristocratic  government ;  and  the  next  year  appeared  his 
famous  Speech  on  American  Taxation,  while  that  on 
American  Conciliation,  1774,  was  answered  by  his  friend 
Johnson  in  Taxation  no  Tyra7iny.  The  most  powerful 
of  his  works  were  the  Reflections  on  the  French  Revo- 
lution, 1 790,  the  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord,  and  the  Letters 


206  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP, 

on  a  Regicide  Peace,  1796-7.  The  first  of  these,  an- 
swered by  Thomas  Paine's  Rights  of  Man,  and  by 
James  Mackintosh's  Vindicice  Gallicce,  spread  over  all 
England  a  terror  of  the  principles  of  the  Revolution ;  the 
third  doubled  the  eagerness  of  England  to  carry  on  the 
war  with  France.  As  a  writer  he  needed  more  temper- 
ance, but,  if  he  had  possessed  it,  we  should  probably  have 
not  had  his  magnificence.  As  an  orator  he  ended  by 
wearying  his  hearers,  but  the  very  men  who  slept  under 
him  in  the  House  read  over  and  over  again  the  same 
speech  when  published  with  renewed  delight.  Gold- 
smith's praise  of  him  —  that  he  "wound  himself  into 
his  subject  like  a  serpent"  —  gives  the  reason  why  he 
sometimes  failed  as  an  orator,  why  he  generally  suc- 
ceeded as  a  writer. 

129.  Prose  from  1 789-1 832.  Miscellaneous. — The 
death  of  Johnson  marks  a  true  period  in  our  later  prose 
literature.  London  had  ceased  then  to  be  the  only  literary 
centre.  Books  were  produced  in  all  parts  of  the  country, 
and  Edinburgh  had  its  own  famous  school  of  literature. 
The  doctrines  of  the  French  Revolution  were  eagerly 
supported  and  eagerly  opposed,  and  stirred  like  leaven 
through  a  great  part  of  the  literary  work  of  England. 
Later  on,  through  Coleridge,  Scott,  Carlyle,  and  others, 
the  influence  of  Lessing,  Goethe,  of  all  the  new  literature 
of  Germany,  began  to  tell  upon  us,  in  theology,  in  phi- 
losophy, and  even  in  the  novel.  The  great  English 
Journals,  the  Morning  Chronicle,  the  Times,  the  Morning 
Post,  the  Morning  Herald,  were  all  set  on  foot  between 


VII  PROSE   LITERATURE    FROM    1 789   TO    1832       20/ 

•1775  and  1793,  between  the  war  with  America  and  the 
war  with   France ;   and  when   men  like   Coleridge  and 
Canning  began  to  write  in  them  the  literature  of  journal- 
ism was  started.     A  Uterature  especially  directed  towards 
education  arose  in  the  Cyclopcedias,  which  began  in  1778, 
and  rapidly  developed  into  vast  dictionaries  of  know- 
ledge.    Along  with  them  were  the  many  series  issued 
from  Edinburgh  and  London  of  Popular  Miscellanies.    A 
crowd  of  literary  men  found  employment  in  writing  about 
books  rather  than  in  writing  them,  and  the  literature  of 
Criticism  became  a  power.     The  Edinburgh  Review  was 
established  in  1802,  and  the  Quarterly,  its  political  op- 
ponent, in  1809,  and  these  were  soon  followed  by  Eraser's 
and  Blackwood's  Magazine.     Jeffrey,  Professor  Wilson, 
Sydney  Smith,  and  a  host  of  others  wrote  in  these  reviews 
on  contemporary  events   and   books.     Interest   in  con- 
temporary stimulated  interest  in  past  literature,  and  Cole- 
ridge, Charles  Lamb,  Thomas  Campbell,  Hazlitt,  Southey, 
and  Savage  Landor  carried  on  that  study  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan and  earlier  poets  to  which  Warton  had  given  so 
much  impulse  in  the  eighteenth  century.     Literary  quar- 
rels concerning  the  nature  of  poetry  produced  books  like 
Coleridge's  Biographia    Literaria ;    and   Wordsworth's 
Essays   on  his   own  art   are   in   admirable   prose.     De 
QuiNCEY,  one  of  the  Edinburgh  School,  is,  owing  to  the 
over-lapping  and  involved  melody  of  his  style,  one  of  our 
best,  as  he  is   one  of  our   most  various   miscellaneous 
writers  :  and  with  him  for  masculine  English,  for  various 
learning  and  forcible  fancy,  and,  not  least,  for  his  vigor- 


208  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

ous  lyrical  work  and  poems,  we  may  rank  Walter 
Savage  Landor,  who  deepened  an  interest  in  English 
and  classic  literature  and  made  a  hterature  of  his  own. 
Charles  Lamb's  inimitable  fineness  of  perception  was 
shown  in  his  criticisms  on  the  old  dramatists,  but  his 
most  original  work  was  the  Essays  of  Elia,  in  which  he 
renewed  the  lost  grace  of  the  Essay,  and  with  a  humour 
not  less  gentle,  more  surprising,  more  self-pleased  than 
Addison's. 

130.  Theological  Literature  had  received  a  new  im- 
pulse in  1738-91  from  the  evangelising  work  of  John 
Wesley  and  Whitfield;  and  their  spiritual  followers, 
Thomas  Scott,  Newton,  and  Cecil,  made  by  their  writ- 
ings the  Evangelical  School.  William  Paley,  in  his 
Evidences,  defended  Christianity  from  the  common-sense 
point  of  view ;  while  the  sermons  of  Robert  Hall  and  of 
Dr.  Chalmers  are,  in  different  ways,  fine  examples  of 
devotional  and  philosophical  eloquence. 

131.  The  eloquent  intelligence  *of  Edinburgh  con- 
tinued the  Literature  of  Philosophy  in  the  work  of 
Dugald  Stewart,  Reid's  successor,  and  in  that  of  Dr. 
Browne,  who  for  the  most  part  opposed  Hume's  funda- 
mental idea  that  Psychology  is  a  part  of  the  science  of 
life.  Coleridge  brought  his  own  and  German  philosophy 
into  the  treatment  of  theological  questions  in  the  Aids  to 
Reflection,  and  into  various  subjects  of  life  in  the  Friend. 
The  utilitarian  view  of  morals  was  put  forth  by  Jeremy 
Bentham  with  great  power,  but  his  chief  work  was  in  the 
province  of  law.     He  founded  the  philosophy  of  juris-v 


Vir  PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1789   TO    1832       209 

prudence,  he  invented  a  scientific  legal  vocabulary,  and  we 
owe  to  him  almost  every  reform  that  has  improved  our  law. 
He  wrote  also  on  political  economy,  but  that  subject  was 
more  fully  developed  by  Malthus,  Ricardo,  and  James  Mill. 

132.  Biography  and  travel  are  linked  at  many  points 
to  history,  and  the  literature  of  the  former  was  enriched 
by  Hayley's  Cowper,  Southey's  Life  of  Nelson,  McCrie's 
Life  of  Knox,  Moore's  Life  of  Byron,  and  Lockhart's 
Life  of  Scott.  As  to  travel,  it  has  rarely  produced  books 
which  may  be  called  literature,  but  the  works  of  biog- 
raphers and  travellers  have  brought  together  the  mate- 
rials of  Hterature.  Bruce  left  for  Africa  in  1762,  and  in 
the  next  seventy  years  Africa,  Egypt,  Italy,  Greece, 
the  Holy  Land,  and  the  Arctic  Regions  were  made  the 
common  property  of  literary  men. 

133.  The  Historical  School  produced  Mitford's  His- 
tory of  Greece  and  Lingard's  History  of  England;  but 
it  was  Henry  Hallam  who  for  the  first  time  wrote  history 
in  this  country  witlfout  prejudice.  His  Europe  during 
the  Middle  Ages,  181 8,  is  distinguished  by  its  exhaustive 
and  judicial  summing-up  of  facts,  and  his  Constitutional 
History  of  England  opened  a  new  vein  of  history  in  the 
best  way.  Since  his  time,  history  has  become  more 
and  more  worthy  of  the  name  of  fine  literature,  and  the 
critical  schools  of  our  own  day,  while  making  truth  the 
first  thing,  and  the  philosophy  of  history  the  second,  do 
not  disdain  but  exact  the  graces  of  literature.  But  of  all 
the  forms  of  prose  literature,  the  novel  was  the  most 
largely  used  and  developed. 


2IO  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

134.  The  Novel. — The  stir  of  thought  made  by  the 
French  Revolution  had  many  side  influences  on  novel- 
writing.  The  political  stories  of  Thomas  Holcroft  and 
William  Godwin  disclosed  a  new  realm  to  the  novelist. 
The  Canterbury  Tales  of  Sophia  and  Harriet  Lee,  and 
the  wild  and  picturesque  tales  of  Mrs.  RadcHffe  intro- 
duced the  romantic  novel.  Mrs.  Inchbald's  Simple 
Story,  1 79 1,  started  the  novel  of  passion,  whilst  Mrs. 
Opie  made  domestic  Ufe  the  sphere  of  her  graceful  and 
pathetic  stories,  1806.  Miss  Edgeworth  in  her  Irish 
stories  gave  the  first  impulse  to  the  novel  of  national 
character,  and  in  her  other  tales  to  the  novel  with  a 
moral  purpose,  1800-47.  Miss  Austen,  "with  an  ex- 
quisite touch  which  renders  commonplace  things  and 
characters  interesting  from  truth  of  description  and  sen- 
timent," produced  the  best  novels  we  have  of  everyday 
society,  1811-17.  With  the  peace  of  1815  arose  new 
forms  of  fiction ;  and  travel,  now  popular,  gave  birth  to 
the  tale  of  foreign  society  and  manners;  of  these, 
Thomas  Hope's  Anastasius  (1819)  was  the  first.  The 
classical  novel  arose  in  Lockhart's  Valerius,  and  Miss 
Ferrier's  humorous  tales  of  Scottish  life  were  pleasant 
to  Walter  Scott. 

It  was  Walter  Scott,  however,  who  raised  the  whole 
of  the  literature  of  the  novel  into  one  of  the  great  in- 
fluences that  bear  on  human  life.  Men  are  still  alive 
who  remember  the  wonder  and  delight  with  which 
Waverley  (1814)  was  welcomed.  The  swiftness  of  work 
combined  with  vast  diligence  which  belongs  to  very  great 


VII  PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1789   TO    1832      211 

genius  belonged  to  him.  Guy  Mannering  was  written 
in  six  weeks,  and  the  Bride  of  Lammermoor,  as  great  in 
fateful  pathos  as  Romeo  and  Juliet,  but  more  solemn, 
was  done  in  a  fortnight.  There  is  then  a  certain  abandon 
in  his  work  which  removes  it  from  the  dignity  of  the 
ancient  writers,  but  we  are  repaid  for  this  loss  by  the  in- 
tensity, and  the  animated  movement,  the  clear  daylight, 
and  the  inspired  delight  in  and  with  which  he  invented 
and  wrote  his  stories.  It  is  not  composition ;  it  is  Scott 
actually  present  in  each  of  his  personages,  doing  their 
deeds  and  speaking  their  thoughts.  His  national  tales 
—  and  his  own  country  was  his  best  inspiration  —  are 
written  with  such  love  for  the  characters  and  the  scenes, 
that  we  feel  his  living  joy  and  love  underneath  each  of 
the  stories  as  a  completing  charm,  as  a  spirit  that  en- 
chants the  whole.  And  in  these  tales  and  in  his  poems 
his  own  deep  kindliness,  his  sympathy  with  human 
nature,  united,  after  years  of  enmity,  the  Highlands  to 
the  Lowlands.  In  the  vivid  portraiture  and  dramatic 
reality  of  such  tales  as  Old  Mortality  and  Queniin  Dur- 
ivard  he  created  the  historical  novel.  "All  is  great," 
said  Goethe,  speaking  of  one  of  these  historical  tales,  "in 
the  Waverley  Novels ;  material,  effect,  characters,  execu- 
tion." In  truth,  so  natural  is  Scott's  invention,  that  it 
seems  creation  —  even  the  landscape  is  woven  through 
the  events  and  in  harmony  with  them.  His  comprehen- 
sive power,  which  drew  with  the  same  certainty  so  many 
characters  in  so  many  various  classes,  was  the  direct  re- 
sult of  his  profound  sympathy  with  the  simpler  feelings 


2t2  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

of  the  human  heart,  and  of  his  pleasure  in  writing  so 
as  to  make  human  life  more  beautiful  and  more  good  in 
the  eyes  of  men.  He  was  always  romantic,  and  his  per- 
sonal romance  did  not  fail  him  when  he  came  to  be  old. 
Like  Shakespeare  he  kept  that  to  the  very  close.  The 
later  years  of  his  life  were  dark,  but  the  almost  unrivalled 
nobleness  of  his  battle  against  ill  fortune  proves  that  he 
was  as  great-hearted  as  he  was  great.  "  God  bless  thee, 
Walter,  my  man,"  said  his  uncle,  "  thou  hast  risen  to  be 
great,  but  thou  wast  always  good."  His  last  long  tale  of 
power  was  the  Fair  Maid  of  Perth,  1828,  and  his  last 
effort,  in  1831,  was  made  the  year  before  he  died.  That 
year,  1832,  which  saw  the  deaths  of  Goethe  and  Scott, 
is  the  close  of  an  epoch  in  literature. 


vra  POETRY   FROM    1730  TO    183^  213 


CHAPTER  VIII 

POETRY   FROM    173O   TO    1 83  2 

135.  The  Elements  and  Forms  of  the  New  Poetry.  — 
The  poetry  we  are  now  to  study  may  be  divided  into  two 
periods.  The  first  dates  fi-om  about  the  middle  of 
Pope's  life,  and  closes  with  the  publication  of  Cowper's 
Task,  1785  ;  the  second  begins  with  the  Task  and  closes 
in  1832.  The  first  is  not  wrongly  called  a  time  of  transi- 
tion. The  influence  of  the  poetry  of  the  past  lasted ; 
new  elements  were  added  to  poetry,  and  new  forms  of  it 
took  shape.  There  was  a  change  also  in  the  style  and 
in  the  subject  of  poetry.  Under  these  heads  I  shall 
bring  together  the  various  poetical  works  of  this  period. 

(i)  The  influence  of  the  didactic  and  satirical  poetry 
of  the  critical  school  lingered  among  the  new  elements 
which  first  modified  and  then  changed  poetry  altogether. 
It  is  found  in  Johnson's  two  satires  on  the  manners  of 
his  time,  the  London,  1738,  and  the  Vanity  of  Hutnan 
Wishes,  1 749 ;  in  Robert  Blair's  dull  poem  of  The 
Grave,  1 743  ;  in  Edward  Young's  Night  Thoughts,  1 743, 
a  poem  on  the  immortaUty  of  the  soul,  and  in  his  satires 
on  The  Universal  Passion  of  fame ;  in  the  tame  work  of 


214  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHA^. 

Richard  Savage,  Johnson's  poor  friend ;  and  in  the  short- 
lived but  vigorous  satires  of  Charles  Churchill,  who  died 
in  1764,  twenty-one  years  after  Savage.  The  Pleasures 
of  the  Imagination,  1744,  by  Mark  Akenside,  belongs 
also  in  spirit  to  the  time  of  Queen  Anne,  and  was  sug- 
gested by  Addison's  essays  in  the  Spectator  on  Imagi- 
nation. 

(2)  The  study  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  re- 
vived, and  with  it  a  more  artistic  poetry.  Men  like 
Thomas  Gray  and  William  Collins  attempted  to  "  revive 
the  just  designs  of  Greece,"  not  only  in  fitness  of  lan- 
guage, but  in  perfection  of  form.  They  are  commonly 
placed  together,  but  the  genius  of  each  was  essentially 
different.  What  they  had  in  common  belonged  to  the 
age  in  which  they  lived,  and  one  of  these  elements 
was  a  certain  artificial  phrasing  from  which  they  found  it 
difficult  to  escape.  Both  sought  beauty  more  than  their 
fellows,  but  Collins  found  it  more  than  Gray.  He  had 
the  greater  grace  and  the  sweeter  simplicity,  and  his  Ode 
to  Simplicity  tells  us  the  direction  in  which  poetry  was 
going.  His  best  work,  like  The  Ode  to  Evening,  is  near 
to  Keats,  and  recalls  that  poet's  imaginative  way.  His  in- 
ferior work  is  often  rude  and  his  style  sometimes  obscure, 
but  when  he  is  touched  by  joy  in  "ecstatic  trial,"  or 
when  he  sits  with  Melancholy  in  love  of  peace  and  gentle 
musing,  he  is  indeed  inspired  by  truth  and  loveliness. 
He  died  too  young  to  do  much  in  a  perfect  way.  Gray 
was  different.  All  is  clear  light  in  his  work.  There  is 
no  gradual  dusky  veil  such  as  Collins  threw  with  so  much 


vill  POETRY   FROM    1 730  TO    1 832  21$ 

charm  over  his  expression.  Out  of  his  love  of  Greek 
work  he  drew  his  fine  lucidity.  Out  of  the  spirit  of  his 
own  time  and  from  his  own  cultivated  experience  he 
drew  the  moral  criticism  of  human  life  which  gives  his 
poetry  its  weight,  even  its  heaviness.  It  is  true  the 
moral  criticism,  even  in  the  Elegy^  shares  in  the  com- 
monplace, but  it  was  not  so  commonplace  in  his  time, 
and  it  is  so  full  of  a  gentle  charity  that  it  transcends  his 
time.  He  moved  with  easy  power  over  many  forms  of 
poetry,  but  there  is  naturalness  and  no  rudeness  in  the 
power.  It  was  adorned  by  high  ornament  and  finish. 
The  Odes  are  far  beyond  their  age,  especially  The 
Progress  of  Poesy ,  and  each  kind  has  its  own  appropri- 
ate manner.  The  Elegy  will  always  remain  one  of  the 
beloved  poems  of  Englishmen.  It  is  not  only  a  piece  of 
exquisite  work ;  it  is  steeped  in  England.  It  is  contem- 
plative and  might  have  been  cold.  On  the  contrary, 
even  when  it  is  conventional,  it  has  a  certain  passion  in 
its  contemplation  which  is  one  of  the  marks  of  the  work 
of  Gray.  Had  he  had  more  imagination  he  would  have 
been  greater,  but  the  spirit  of  his  age  repressed  nature  in 
him.  But  he  stands  clear  and  bright,  along  with  his 
brother,  on  the  ridge  between  the  old  and  the  new. 
Having  ascended  through  the  old  poetry,  he  saw  the  new 
landscape  of  song  below  him,  felt  its  fresher  air,  and  sent 
his  own  power  into  the  men  who  arose  after  him. 

(3)  The  study  of  the  Elizabethan  and  the  earlier 
poets  like  Chaucer,  and  of  the  whole  course  of  poetry  in 
England,  was  taken  up  with  great  interest.     Shakespeare 


2l6  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

and  Chaucer  had  engaged  both  Dryden  and  Pope ;  but 
the  whole  subject  was  now  enlarged.  Gray,  like  Pope, 
projected  a  history  of  English  poetry,  and  his  Ode  on 
the  Progress  of  Poesy  illustrates  this  new  interest. 
Thomas  Warton  wrote  his  History  of  English  Poetry, 
1774-81,  and  brought  the  lovers  of  poetry  into  closer 
contact  with  Chaucer.  Pope's,  Theobald's,  Sir  Thomas 
Hanmer's,  and  Warburton's  editions  of  Shakespeare  were 
succeeded  by  Johnson's  in  1 765  ;  and  Garrick  began  the 
restoration  of  the  genuine  text  of  Shakespeare's  plays 
for  the  stage.  Spenser  formed  the  spirit  and  work  of 
some  poets,  and  Thomas  Warton  wrote  an  essay  on  the 
Faerie  Queene.  William  Shenstone's  Schoolmistress,  1 742, 
was  one  of  these  Spenserian  poems,  and  so  was  Thom- 
son's delightful  Castle  of  Indolence,  1748.  James  Beattie, 
in  the  Minstrel,  1771,  also  followed  the  stanza  and  man- 
ner of  Spenser. 

(4)  A  new  element  —  interest  in  the  romantic  past  — 
was  aided  by  the  publication  of  Dr.  Percy's  Reliques  of 
Ancient  English  Poetry,  1765.  The  narrative  ballad  and 
the  narrative  romance,  afterwards  taken  up  and  perfected 
by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  had  already  begun  to  strike  their 
roots  afresh  in  English  poetry.  The  Braes  of  Yarrow 
and  Mallet's  William  and  Margaret  were  written  before 
1725.  Men  now  began  to  seek  among  the  ruder  times 
of  history  for  wild,  natural  stories  of  human  life ;  and 
the  pleasure  in  these  increased  and  accompanied  the 
growing  love  of  lonely,  even  of  savage  scenery.  Even 
before  the   Reliques   were  published,   Gray's   power   of 


VIII  POETRY    FROM    1730   TO    1832  21/ 

seeing  into  the  right  thing  is  seen  in  this  matter.  He 
entered  the  new  paths,  and  in  a  new  atmosphere,  when 
he  wrote  of  the  Norse  legends,  or  studied  what  he  could 
learn  of  the  poetry  of  Wales.  The  Ossian,  1762,  of 
James  Macpherson,  which  imposed  itself  on  the  public 
as  a  translation  of  Gaelic  epic  poems,  is  an  example  of 
this  new  element.  Still  more  remarkable  in  this  way 
were  the  poems  of  Thomas  Chatterton, 

"  That  sleepless  soul  who  perished  in  his  pride." 

He  pretended  to  have  discovered,  in  a  muniment  room 
at  Bristol,  the  Death  of  Sir  Charles  Bawdin,  and  other 
poems,  by  an  imaginary  monk  named  Thomas  Rowley, 
1768.  Written  with  quaint  speUing,  and  with  a  great 
deal  of  lyrical  invention,  they  raised  around  them  a  great 
controversy.  His  early  death,  at  seventeen,  has,  by  the 
pity  of  it,  lifted  his  lyric  poetry,  romantic  as  it  is,  into 
more  repute  than  it  deserves. 

136.  Change  of  Style.  —  We  have  seen  how  the  natural 
style  of  the  Elizabethan  poets  had  passed  into  a  style 
which  erred  against  the  simplicity  of  natural  expression. 
In  reaction  from  this  the  critical  poets  set  aside  natural 
feeling,  and  wrote  according  to  intellectual  rules  of  art. 
Their  style  lost  life  and  fire ;  and  losing  these,  lost  art 
and  gained  artifice.  Unwarmed  by  natural  feeling,  it  be- 
came as  unnatural  a  style,  though  in  a  different  way, 
as  that  of  the  later  Ehzabethan  poets.  But  out  of  the 
failure  of  nature  without  art,  and  of  art  without  nature. 


2l8  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

and  cut  of  the  happy  union  of  both  in  scattered  and 
particular  examples,  the  way  was  now  ready  for  a  style 
in  which  the  art  should  itself  be  nature,  and  it  found 
its  first  absolute  expression  in  a  few  of  Cowper's  lyrics. 
His  style,  in  such  poems  as  the  Lines  to  Mary  Unwin, 
and  in  The  Castaway,  arises  out  of  the  simplest  pathos, 
and  yet  is  almost  as  pure  in  expression  as  a  Greek  elegy. 
The  work  was  then  done ;  but  the  element  of  fervent 
passion  did  not  enter  into  poetry  till  the  poems  of  Robert 
Burns  appeared  in  1786. 

137.  Change  of  Subjec*.  Nature. — The  Poets  have 
always  worked  on  two  great  subjects  —  man  and  nature. 
Up  to  the  age  of  Pope  the  subject  of  man  was  chiefly 
treated,  and  we  have  seen  how  many  phases  it  went 
through.  There  remained  the  subject  of  nature  and  of 
man's  relation  to  it ;  that  is,  of  the  visible  landscape,  sea, 
and  sky,  and  all  that  men  feel  in  contact  with  them. 
Natural  scenery  had  been  hitherto  chiefly  used  as  a  back- 
ground to  the  picture  of  human  hfe.  It  now  began  to 
occupy  a  much  larger  space  in  poetry,  and  after  a  time 
grew  to  occupy  a  distinct  place  of  its  own  apart  from 
man.  Much  of  this  was  owing  to  the  opening  out  of  the 
wild  country  by  new  roads  and  to  the  increased  safety  of 
travel.  It  is  the  growth  of  this  new  subject  which  will 
engage  us  now. 

138.  The  Poetry  of  Natural  Description.  —  We  have 
already  found  in  the  poets,  but  chiefly  among  the  lyrical 
poets,  a  pleasure  in  rural  scenery  and  the  emotions  it 
awakened.     But  nature  is  only,  as  in  the  work  of  Shake- 


VIII  POETRY    FROM    1730   TO    1832  2I9 

speare,  Marvell,  Milton,  Vaughan,  or  Herrick,  incident- 
ally introduced.  The  first  poem  devoted  to  natural 
description  appeared  while  Pope  was  yet  alive,  in  the 
very  midst  of  the  town  poetry.  It  was  the  Seasons, 
1726-30;  and  it  is  curious,  remembering  what  I  have 
said  about  the  peculiar  turn  of  the  Scots  for  natural  de- 
scription, that  it  was  the  work  of  James  Thomson,  a  Scots- 
man. It  described  the  landscape  and  country  life  of 
Spring,  Summer,  Autumn,  and  Winter.  He  wrote  with 
his  eye  upon  their  scenery,  and  even  when  he  wrote  of 
it  in  his  room,  it  was  with  "a  recollected  love."  The 
descriptions  were  too  much  hke  catalogues,  the  very 
fault  of  the  previous  Scottish  poets,  and  his  style  was 
heavy  and  cold,  but  he  was  the  first  poet  who  deliber- 
ately led  the  English  people  into  that  separated  world  of 
natural  description  which  has  enchanted  us  in  the  work 
of  modern  poetry.  The  impulse  he  gave  was  soon  fol- 
lowed. Men  left  the  town  to  visit  the  country  and 
record  their  feelings,  John  Dyer's  Grongar  Hill,  1726, 
a  description  of  a  journey  in  South  Wales,  and  his  Fleece, 
1757,  are  full  of  country  sights  and  scenes:  and  even 
Akenside  mingled  his  spurious  philosophy  with  pictures 
of  the  solitudes  of  nature. 

Foreign  travel  now  enlarged  the  love  of  nature.  The 
wilder  country  of  England  was  eagerly  visited.  Gray's 
letters,  some  of  the  best  in  the  English  language,  de- 
scribe the  landscape  of  Yorkshire  and  Westmoreland  with 
a  minuteness  quite  new  in  English  literature.  In  his 
poetry  he  used  the  description  of  nature  as  "its  most 


220  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAR 

graceful  ornament,"  but  never  made  it  the  subject.  It 
was  interwoven  with  reflections  on  human  Ufe,  and  used 
to  point  its  moral.  Collins  observes  the  same  method 
in  his  Ode  on  the  Passions  and  the  Ode  to  Evening. 
There  is  as  yet  but  little  love  of  nature  entirely  for  its 
own  sake.  A  further  step  was  made  by  Oliver  Gold- 
smith in  his  Traveller,  1764,  a  sketch  of  national  man- 
ners and  governments,  and  in  his  Deserted  Village,  1770. 
He  describes  natural  scenery  with  less  emotion  than 
Collins,  but  does  not  moralise  it  like  Gray.  The  scenes 
he  paints  are  pure  pictures,  and  he  has  no  personal 
interest  in  them.  The  next  step  was  made  a  few  years 
later  by  some  fourth-rate  men  like  the  two  Wartons. 
Their  poems  do  not  speak  of  nature  and  human  life,  but 
of  nature  and  themselves.  They  see  the  reflection  of 
their  own  passions  in  the  woods  and  streams,  and  this 
self-conscious  pleasure  with  lonely  nature  grew  slowly 
into  a  main  subject  of  poetry.  These  were  the  steps 
towards  that  love  of  nature  for  its  own  sake  which  we 
shall  find  in  the  poets  who  followed  Cowper.  One  poem 
of  the  time  almost  anticipates  it.  It  is  the  Minstrel, 
1 771,  of  James  Beattie.  This  poem  represents  a  young 
poet  educated  almost  altogether  by  solitary  communion 
with  nature,  and  by  love  of  her  beauty ;  and  both  in  the 
spirit  and  treatment  of  the  first  part  of  the  story  resem- 
bles very  closely  Wordsworth's  description  of  his  own 
education  by  nature  in  the  beginning  of  the  Prelude. 

139.    Further    Change    of    Subject.     Man.  —  During 
this  time  the  interest  in  mankind,  that  is,  in  man  inde- 


vra  POETRY    FROM    1 730  TO    1 832  221 

pendent  of  nation,  class,  and  caste,  which  we  have  seen 
in  prose,  began  to  influence  poetry.  One  form  of  it 
appeared  in  the  pleasure  the  poets  began  to  take  in 
men  of  other  nations  than  England  ;  another  form  of  it 
—  and  this  was  increased  by  the  Methodist  revival  —  was 
a  deep  feeling  for  the  lives  of  the  poor.  Thomson 
speaks  with  sympathy  of  the  Siberian  exile  and  the 
Mecca  pilgrim,  and  the  Traveller  of  Goldsmith  enters 
into  foreign  questions.  His  Deserted  Village,  Shenstone's 
Schoolmistress,  Gray's  Elegy  celebrate  the  annals  of  the 
poor.  Michael  Bruce  in  his  Lochleven  praises  the  "  secret 
primrose  path  of  rural  hfe,"  and  Dr.  John  Langhorne  in 
his  Country  Justice  pleads  the  cause  of  the  poor  and 
paints  their  sorrows.  Connected  with  this  new  element 
is  the  simple  ballad  of  simple  love,  such  as  Shenstone's 
Jemmy  Dawson,  Mickle's  Mariner's  Wife,  Goldsmith's 
Edwin  and  Angelina,  poems  which  started  afresh  a  de- 
lightful type  of  poetry,  afterwards  worked  out  more  com- 
pletely in  the  Lyrical  Ballads  of  Wordsworth.  In  a  class 
apart  stands  the  Song  to  David^  a  long  poem  written  by 
Christopher  Smart,  a  friend  of  Johnson's.  Its  power  of 
metre  and  imaginative  presentation  of  thoughts  and 
things,  and  its  mingling  of  sweet  and  grand  religious 
poetry  ought  to  make  it  better  known. 

140.  Scottish  Poetry  illustrates  and  anticipates  the 
poetry  of  the  poor  and  the  ballad.  We  have  not  men- 
tioned it  since  Sir  David  Lyndsay,  for  with  the  exception 
of  stray  songs  its  voice  was  almost  silent  for  a  century 
and  a  half.     It  revived  in  Allan  Ramsay,  a  friend  of 


222  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Pope  and  Gay.  His  light  pieces  of  rustic  humour  were 
followed  by  the  Tea  Table  Miscellany  and  the  Ever-  Green, 
collections  of  existing  Scottish  songs  mixed  up  with  some 
of  his  own.  Ramsay's  pastoral  drama  of  the  Gentle  Shep- 
herd, 1725,  is  a  pure,  tender,  and  genuine  picture  of 
Scottish  life  and  love  among  the  poor  and  in  the  country. 
Robert  Ferguson  deserves  to  be  named  because  he 
kindled  the  muse  of  Burns,  but  his  occasional  pieces, 
1773,  are  chiefly  concerned  with  the  rude  and  humorous 
life  of  Edinburgh.  One  man,  Michael  Bruce,  illustrates 
the  English  transition  of  which  I  have  spoken.  The 
Ballad,  Scotland's  dear  companion,  took  a  more  modern 
but  pathetic  form  in  some  Yarrow  poems,  in  Auld  Robin 
Gray  and  the  Lament  for  Flodden.  The  peculiarities  I 
have  dwelt  on  already  continue  in  this  Scottish  revival. 
There  is  the  same  nationality,  the  same  rough  wit,  the 
same  love  of  nature,  but  the  love  of  colour  has  lessened. 
141.  The  Second  Period  of  the  New  Poetry.  —  The 
new  elements  and  the  changes  on  which  I  have  dwelt 
are  expressed  by  three  poets  —  Cowper,  Crabbe,  and 
Burns.  But  before  these  we  must  mention  the  poems 
of  WiLLUM  Blake,  the  artist,  and  for  three  reasons,  (i) 
They  represent  the  new  elements.  The  Poetical  Sketches, 
written  in  1777,  illustrate  the  new  study  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan poets.  Blake  imitated  Spenser,  and  in  his  short 
fragment  of  Edward  III.  we  hear  again  the  note  of 
Marlowe's  violent  imagination.  A  short  poem  To  the 
Muses  is  a  cry  for  the  restoration  to  English  poetry  of 
the  old  poetic  passion  it  had  lost.     In  some  ballad  poems 


Vin  POETRY    FROM    1730   TO    1832  223 

we  trace  the  influence  represented  by  Ossian  and  quick- 
ened by  the  pubUcation  of  Percy's  Reliques.  (2)  We 
find  also  in  his  work  certain  elements  which  belong  to 
the  second  period  of  which  I  shall  soon  speak.  The 
love  of  animals  is  one.  A  great  love  of  children  and 
the  poetry  of  home  is  another.  He  also  anticipated  in 
1789  and  1794,  when  his  Songs  of  Innocence  and  Experi- 
ence were  written,  the  simple  natural  poetry  of  ordinary 
life  which  Wordsworth  perfected  in  the  Lyrical  Ballads, 
1798.  Moreover,  the  democratic  element,  the  hatred  of 
priestcraft,  and  the  cry  against  social  wrongs  which  came 
much  later  into  Enghsh  poetry  spring  up  in  his  poetry. 
Then,  he  was  a  full  Mystic,  and  through  his  mysticism 
appears  that  search  after  the  true  aims  of  hfe  and  after  a 
freer  theology  which  characterise  our  poetry  after  1832. 
(3)  He  cast  back  as  well  as  forward,  and  reproduced  in 
his  songs  the  spirit,  movement,  and  music  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan songs.  The  little  poems  in  the  Songs  of  Inno- 
cence, on  infancy  and  first  motherhood,  and  on  subjects 
like  the  Lamb,  are  without  rival  in  our  language  for  sim- 
plicity, tenderness,  and  joy.  The  Songs  of  Experience 
give  the  reverse  side  of  the  Songs  of  Innocence,  and  they 
see  the  evil  of  the  world  as  a  child  with  a  man's  heart 
would  see  it  —  with  exaggerated  horror.  This  small  but 
predictive  work  of  Blake,  coming  where  it  did,  between 
1777  and  1794,  going  back  to  Elizabethan  lyrics  and  for- 
ward to  those  of  Wordsworth,  is  very  remarkable. 

142.   William  Cowper's  first  poems  were  some  of  the 
Olney  Hymns,  1 7  79,  and  in  these  the  religious  poetry  of 


224  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Charles  Wesley  was  continued.  The  profound  personal 
religion,  gloomy  even  to  insanity  as  it  often  became, 
which  fills  the  whole  of  Cowper's  poetry,  introduced  a 
theological  element  into  English  poetry  which  continually 
increased  till  it  died  out  with  Browning  and  Tennyson. 
His  didactic  and  satirical  poems  in  1782  link  him  back- 
wards to  the  last  age.  His  translation  of  Homer,  1791, 
and  of  shorter  pieces  from  the  Latin  and  Greek,  connects 
him  with  the  classical  influence,  his  interest  in  Milton 
with  the  revived  study  of  the  English  poets.  The  play- 
ful and  gentle  vein  of  humour  which  he  showed  in  John 
Gilpin  and  other  poems,  opened  a  new  kind  of  verse  to 
poets.  With  this  kind  of  humour  is  connected  a  simple 
pathos  of  which  Cowper  is  a  great  master.  The  Lines  to 
Mary  Unwin  and  to  his  Mother's  Picture  prove,  with 
the  work  of  Blake,  that  pure  natural  feeling  wholly  free 
from  artifice  had  returned  to  EngUsh  song.  A  new  ele- 
ment was  also  introduced  by  him  and  Blake  —  the  love 
of  animals  and  the  poetry  of  their  relation  to  man,  a  vein 
plentifully  worked  by  after  poets.  His  greatest  work  was 
the  Task,  1785.  It  is  mainly  a  description  of  himself 
and  a  life  in  the  country,  his  home,  his  friends,  his 
thoughts  as  he  walked,  the  quiet  landscape  of  Olney,  the 
life  of  the  poor  people  about  him,  mixed  up  with  disqui- 
sitions on  political  and  social  subjects,  and  at  the  end,  a 
prophecy  of  the  victory  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  The 
change  in  it  in  relation  to  the  subject  of  nature  is  very 
great.  Cowper  loves  nature  entirely  for  her  own  sake. 
The  change  in  relation  to  the  subject  of  man  is  equally 


vni  POETRY   FROM    1730  TO    1832  22$ 

great.  The  idea  of  mankind  as  a  whole  which  we  have 
seen  growing  up  is  fully  formed  in  Cowper's  mind.  And 
though  splendour  and  passion  were  added  by  the  poets 
who  succeeded  him  to  the  new  poetry,  yet  they  worked 
on  the  thoughts  he  had  begun  to  express,  and  he  is  so 
far  their  forerunner. 

143.  George  Crabbe  took  up  the  side  of  the  poetry  of 
man  which  had  to  do  with  the  lives  of  the  poor  in  the 
Village,  1783,  and  in  the  Parish  Register,  1807.  In  the 
short  tales  related  in  these  books  we  are  brought  face  to 
face  with  the  sacrifices,  temptations,  love,  and  crimes  of 
humble  Hfe,  and  the  effect  of  these  poems  in  widening 
human  sympathies  was  great  among  his  readers.  His 
work  wanted  the  humour  of  Cowper,  and  though  often 
pathetic  and  always  forcible,  was  perhaps  too  unrelenting 
for  pure  pathos.  He  did  much  better  work  afterwards 
in  his  Tales  of  the  Hall.  His  work  on  nature  is  as  mi- 
nute and  accurate,  but  as  limited  in  range  of  excellence, 
as  his  work  on  man.  Robert  Bloomfield,  himself  a 
poor  shoemaker,  added  to  this  poetry  of  the  poor.  The 
Farmer's  Boy,  finished  in  1798,  and  the  Rural  Tales, 
are  poems  as  cheerful  as  Crabbe's  were  stern,  and  his 
descriptions  of  rural  life  are  not  less  faithful.  The  poetry 
of  the  poor,  thus  started,  long  continued  in  our  verse. 
Wordsworth  added  to  it  new  features,  and  Thomas  Hood 
in  short  pieces  like  the  Song  of  the  Shirt  gave  it  a  direct 
bearing  on  social  evils. 

144.  One  element,  the  passionate  treatment  of  love, 
had  been  on  the  whole  absent  from  our  poetry  since  the 

Q 


226  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Restoration.  It  was  restored  by  Robert  Burns.  In  his 
love  songs  we  hear  again,  even  more  simply,  more  directly, 
the  same  natural  music  which  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth  en- 
chanted the  world.  It  was  as  a  love-poet  that  he  began 
to  write,  and  the  first  edition  of  his  poems  appeared  in 
1786.  But  he  was  not  only  the  poet  of  love,  but  also  of 
the  new  excitement  about  mankind.  Himself  poor,  he 
sang  the  poor.  He  did  the  same  work  in  Scotland  in 
1786  which  Crabbe  began  in  England  in  1783  and  Cow- 
per  in  1785,  and  it  is  worth  remarking  how  the  dates  run 
together.  As  in  Cowper,  so  also  in  Bums,  the  further 
widening  of  human  sympathies  is  shown  in  his  tenderness 
for  animals.  He  carried  on  also  the  Celtic  elements  of 
Scottish  poetry,  but  the  rattling  fun  of  the  Jolly  Beggars 
and  of  Tarn  d'  Shanter  is  united  to  a  life-like  painting  of 
human  character  which  is  peculiarly  English.  A  large 
gentleness  of  feeling  often  made  his  wit  into  that  true 
humour  which  is  more  English  than  Celtic,  and  the  pas- 
sionate pathos  of  such  poems  as  Mary  in  Heaven  is  con- 
nected with  this  vein  of  EngUsh  humour.  The  special 
nationality  of  Scottish  poetry  is  as  strong  in  Bums  as  in 
any  of  his  predecessors,  but  it  is  also  mingled  with  a 
larger  view  of  man  than  the  merely  national  one.  Nor 
did  he  fail  to  carry  on  the  Scottish  love  of  nature,  though 
he  shows  the  English  influence  in  using  natural  descrip- 
tion not  for  the  love  of  nature  alone,  but  as  a  background 
for  human  love.  It  was  the  strength  of  his  passions  and 
the  weakness  of  his  moral  will  which  made  his  poetry 
and  spoilt  his  life. 


VIII  POETRY   FROM    1 730   TO    1832  22/ 

145.  The  French  Revolution  and  the  Poets.  — Certain 
ideas  relating  to  mankind  considered  as  a  whole  had 
been  growing  up  in  Europe  for  some  centuries,  and  we 
have  seen  their  influence  on  the  work  of  Cowper,  Crabbe, 
and  Burns.  These  ideas  spoke  of  a  return  to  nature,  and 
of  the  best  life  being  found  in  the  country  rather  than 
in  the  town,  so  that  the  simple  life  of  the  poor  and  the 
scenery  of  the  country  were  idealised  into  subjects  for 
poetry.  They  spoke  also  of  natural  rights  that  belonged 
to  every  man,  and  which  united  all  men  to  one  another. 
All  men  were  equal,  and  free,  and  brothers.  There  was 
therefore  only  one  class,  the  class  of  man;  only  one 
nation,  the  nation  of  man,  of  which  all  were  citizens. 
The  divisions  therefore  which  wealth  and  rank  and 
caste  and  national  boundaries  had  made  were  theo- 
retically put  aside  as  wrong.  Such  ideas  had  been 
growing  into  the  political,  moral,  and  religious  life  of 
men  ever  since  the  Renaissance,  and  they  brought  with 
them  their  own  emotions.  France,  which  does  much  of 
the  formative  work  of  Europe,  had  for  some  time  past 
expressed  them  constantly  in  her  literature.  She  now 
expressed  them  in  the  action  which  overthrew  the  Bastille 
in  1789  and  proclaimed  the  new  Constitution  in  the  fol- 
lowing year.  They  passed  then  from  an  abstract  to  a 
concrete  form,  and  became  active  powers  in  the  world, 
and  it  is  round  the  excitement  they  kindled  in  England 
that  the  work  of  the  poets  from  1790  to  1832  can  best 
be  grouped.  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Southey  ac- 
cepted them  at  first  with  joy,  but  receded  from  thera 


228  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

when  they  ended  in  the  violence  of  the  Reign  of  Terror, 
and  in  the  imperiaUsm  of  Napoleon.  Scott  turned  from 
them  with  pain  to  write  of  the  romantic  past  which  they 
destroyed.  Byron  did  not  express  them  themselves,  but 
he  expressed  the  whole  of  the  revolutionary  spirit  in  its 
action  against  old  social  opinions.  Shelley  took  them  up 
after  the  reaction  against  them  had  begun  to  die  away, 
and  in  half  his  poetry  re-expressed  them.  Two  men, 
Rogers  and  Keats,  were  wholly  untouched  by  them. 
One  special  thing  they  did  for  poetry.  They  brought 
back,  by  the  powerful  feelings  they  kindled  in  men, 
passion  into  its  style,  into  all  its  work  about  man,  and 
through  that,  into  its  work  about  nature. 

But,  in  giving  the  French  Revolution  its  due  weight, 
we  must  always  remember  that  these  ideas  existed  al- 
ready in  England  and  were  expressed  by  the  poets.  The 
French  outburst  precipitated  them,  and  started  our  new 
poetry  with  a  rush  and  a  surprise.  But  the  enthusiasm 
soon  suffered  a  chill,  and  a  great  part  of  our  new  poetry 
was  impelled,  not  by  the  Revolution,  but  by  the  indig- 
nant revolt  against  what  followed  on  it.  Moreover,  I 
have  already  shown  that  fully  half  of  the  new  lines  of 
thought  and  feeling  on  which  the  poetry  of  England 
ran  in  the  nineteenth  century  had  been  laid  down  in 
the  century  which  preceded  it,  and  they  were  com- 
pleted now. 

146.  Robert  Southey  began  his  political  life  with  the 
revolutionary  poem  of  Wat  Tyler,  1 794 ;  and  between 
1801  and  1814  wrote  Thalaba,  Madoc,   The    Curse   oj 


Vin  POETRY   FROM    1730  TO    1832  229 

Kehama,  and  Roderick  the  Last  of  the  Goths.  Thalaba 
and  Kehama  are  stories  of  Arabian  and  of  Indian  mythol- 
ogy. They  are  real  poems,  and  have  the  interest  of 
good  narrative  and  the  charm  of  musical  metre,  but 
the  finer  spirit  of  poetry  is  not  in  them.  Roderick  is 
the  most  human  and  the  most  poetical.  His  Vision  of 
Judgment,  written  on  the  death  of  George  III.,  and  ridi- 
culed by  Byron  in  another  Vision,  proves  him  to  have 
become  a  Tory  of  Tories.  Samuel  T.  Coleridge  could 
not  turn  round  so  completely,  but  the  stormy  enthusiasm 
of  his  early  poems  was  lessened  when  in  1 796  he  wrote 
the  Ode  on  the  Departing  Year  and  France,  an  Ode, 
1798.  His  early  poems  are  transitional,  partly  based 
on  Gray,  violent  and  obscure  in  style.  But  when  he 
came  to  live  with  Wordsworth,  he  gained  simplicity, 
and  for  a  short  time  his  poetic  spirit  was  at  the  height 
of  joy  and  production.  But  his  early  disappointment 
about  France  was  bitter,  and  then,  too,  he  injured  his 
own  life.  The  noble  ode  to  Dejection  is  instinct  not 
only  with  his  own  wasted  life,  but  with  the  sorrow  of 
one  who  has  had  golden  ideals  and  found  them  turn 
in  his  hands  to  clay.  His  best  work  is  but  little,  but 
unique  of  its  kind.  For  exquisite  metrical  movement 
and  for  imaginative  phantasy,  there  is  nothing  in  our 
language  to  be  compared  with  Christabel  and  Kubla 
Khan.  The  Ancient  Mariner,  published  as  one  of  the 
Lyrical  Ballads  in  1798,  belongs  to  the  dim  country 
between  earth  and  heaven,  where  the  fairy  music  is 
heard,  sometimes  dreadful,  sometimes  lovely,  but  always 


230  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

lonely.     All  that  he  did  excellently  might  be  bound  up 
in  twenty  pages,  but  it  should  be  bound  in  pure  gold. 

147.  Of  all  the  poets  misnamed  Lake  Poets,  William 
Wordsworth  was  the  greatest.  Born  in  1770,  educated 
on  the  banks  of  Esthwaite,  he  loved  the  scenery  of  the 
Lakes  as  a  boy,  lived  among  it  in  his  manhood,  and 
died  in  1850  at  Rydal  Mount,  close  to  Rydal  Lake. 
He  took  his  degree  in  1791  at  Cambridge.  The  year 
before,  he  had  made  a  short  tour  on  the  Continent, 
and  stepped  on  the  French  shore  at  the  very  time 
when  the  whole  land  was  "mad  with  joy."  The  end 
of  1 791  saw  him  again  in  France  and  living  at  Orleans. 
He  threw  himself  eagerly  into  the  Revolution,  joined 
the  "patriot  side,"  and  came  to  Paris  just  after  the 
September  massacre  of  1792.  Narrowly  escaping  the 
fate  of  his  friends  the  Brissotins,  he  got  home  to  Eng- 
land before  the  execution  of  Louis  XVI.  in  1793,  and 
published  his  Descriptive  Sketches  and  the  Evening 
Walk.  His  sympathy  with  the  French  continued,  and 
he  took  their  side  against  his  own  country.  He  was 
poor,  but  his  friend  Raisley  Calvert  left  him  900/.  and 
enabled  him  to  live  the  simple  life  he  had  then  chosen 
—  the  Hfe  of  a  retired  poet.  At  first  we  find  him  at 
Racedown,  where  in  1797  he  made  friendship  with 
Coleridge,  and  then  at  Alfoxden,  in  Somerset,  where 
he  and  Coleridge  planned  and  published  in  1798  the 
first  volume  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads.  After  a  winter  in 
Germany  with  Coleridge,  where  the  Prelude  was  be- 
gun, he  took  a  small  cottage   at  Grasmere,  and  the 


Vin  POETRY    FROM    1730   TO    1832  23 1 

first  book  of  The  Recluse  tells  of  his  settlement  in  that 
quiet  valley.  It  tells  also  of  the  passion  and  intensity 
of  the  young  man  who  saw  infinite  visions  of  work 
before  him,  and  who  lived  poor,  in  daily  and  unbroken 
joy.  It  was  in  this  irradiated  world  that  he  wrote  the 
best  of  his  poems.  There  in  1805-6  he  finished  the 
Prelude.  Another  set  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  appeared 
in  1800,  and  in  1807  other  poems.  The  Excursion 
belongs  to  18 14.  From  that  time  till  his  death  he 
produced  from  his  home  at  Rydal  Mount  a  long  suc- 
cession of  poems. 

148.  Wordsworth  and  Nature.  —  The  Prelude  is  the 
history  of  Wordsworth's  poetical  growth  from  a  child 
till  1806.  It  reveals  him  as  the  poet  of  Nature  and 
of  Man.  His  view  of  nature  was  entirely  different  from 
that  which  up  to  his  time  the  poets  had  held.  Words- 
worth conceived,  as  poet,  that  nature  was  alive.  It  had, 
he  imagined,  one  living  soul  which,  entering  into  flower, 
stream,  or  mountain,  gave  them  each  a  soul  of  their 
own.  Between  this  Spirit  in  nature  and  the  mind  of 
man  there  was  a  prearranged  harmony  which  enabled 
nature  to  communicate  its  own  thoughts  to  man,  and 
man  to  reflect  upon  them,  until  an  absolute  union  be- 
tween them  was  established.  This  was,  in  fact,  the 
theory  of  the  Florentine  Neo-Platonists  of  the  Renais- 
sance. They  did  not  care  for  nature,  but  when  Words- 
worth either  reconceived  or  adopted  this  idea,  it  made 
him  the  first  who  loved  nature  with  a  personal  love, 
for   she,  being  living,  and   personal,  and   not   only  his 


232  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAF. 

reflection,  was  made  capable  of  being  loved  as  a  man 
loves  a  woman.  He  could  brood  on  her  character,  her 
ways,  her  words,  her  Hfe,  as  he  did  on  those  of  his 
wife  or  sister.  Hence  arose  his  minute  and  loving  ob- 
servation of  her  and  his  passionate  description  of  all 
her  life.  This  was  his  poetic  philosophy  with  regard 
to  nature,  and  bound  up  as  it  was  with  the  idea  of 
God  as  the  Thought  which  pervaded  and  made  the 
world,  it  rose  into  a  poetic  religion  of  nature  and  man. 
149.  Wordsworth  and  Man.  —  The  poet  of  nature  in 
this  special  way,  Wordsworth  is  even  more  the  poet  of 
man.  It  is  by  his  close  and  loving  penetration  into 
the  realities  and  simpHcities  of  human  life  that  he  him- 
self makes  his  claim  on  our  reverence  as  a  poet.  He 
'  relates  in  the  Prelude  how  he  had  been  led  through  his 
love  of  nature  to  honour  man.  The  shepherds  of  the 
Lake  hills,  the  dalesmen,  had  been  seen  by  him  as 
part  of  the  wild  scenery  in  which  he  lived,  and  he 
mixed  up  their  life  with  the  grandeur  of  nature  and 
came  to  honour  them  as  part  of  her  being.  The  love 
of  nature  led  him  to  the  love  of  man.  It  was  exactly 
the  reverse  order  to  that  of  the  previous  poets.  At 
Cambridge,  and  afterwards,  in  the  crowd  of  London 
and  in  his  first  tour  on  the  Continent,  he  received  new 
impressions  of  the  vast  world  of  man,  but  nature  still 
remained  the  first.  It  was  only  during  his  hfe  in  France 
and  in  the  excitement  of  the  new  theories  and  their  ac- 
tivity that  he  was  swept  away  from  nature  and  found 
himself  thinking  of  man  as  distinct  from  her  and  first 


vm  POETRV    FROM    1730   TO    1832  233 

in  importance.  But  the  hopes  he  had  formed  from  the 
Revolution  broke  down.  All  his  dreams  about  a  new 
life  for  mankind  were  made  vile  when  France  gave  up 
liberty  for  Napoleon;  and  he  was  left  without  love  of 
nature  or  care  for  man.  It  was  then  that  his  sister 
Dorothy,  herself  worthy  of  mention  in  a  history  of  litera- 
ture, led  him  back  to  his  early  love  of  nature  and  restored 
his  mind.  Living  quietly  at  Grasmere,  he  sought  in  the 
simple  lives  of  the  dalesmen  round  him  for  the  founda- 
tions of  what  he  felt  to  be  a  truer  view  of  mankind  than 
the  theories  of  the  French  Revolution  afforded.  And 
in  thinking  and  writing  of  the  common  duties  and  faith, 
kindnesses  and  truth  of  lowly  men,  he  found  in  man  once 
more 

an  object  of  delight, 
Of  pure  imagination  and  of  love. 

With  that  he  recovered  his  interest  in  the  larger  move- 
ments of  mankind.  His  love  of  liberty  and  hatred  of 
oppression  revived.  He  saw  in  Napoleon  the  enemy  of 
the  human  race.  A  series  of  sonnets  followed  the  events 
on  the  Continent.  One  recorded  his  horror  at  the  attack 
on  the  Swiss,  another  mourned  the  fate  of  Venice,  an- 
other the  fate  of  Toussaint  the  negro  chief;  others  cele- 
brated the  struggle  of  Hofer  and  the  Tyrolese,  others 
the  struggle  of  Spain.  Two  thanksgiving  odes  rejoiced  in 
the  overthrow  of  the  oppressor  at  Waterloo.  He  became 
conservative  in  his  old  age,  but  his  interest  in  social 
and  national  movements  did  not  decay.     He  wrote,  and 


234  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

badly,  on  Education,  the  Poor  Laws,  and  other  sub- 
jects. When  ahuost  seventy  he  took  the  side  of  the 
Carbonari  and  sympathised  with  the  Italian  struggle. 
He  was  truly  a  poet  of  mankind.  But  his  chief  work 
was  done  in  his  own  country  and  among  his  own  folk ; 
and  he  is  the  foremost  singer  of  those  who  threw  around 
the  lives  of  homely  men  and  women  the  glory  and  sweet- 
ness of  song.  He  made  his  verse  "  deal  boldly  with  sub- 
stantial things  "  ;  his  theme  was  "  no  other  than  the  very 
heart  of  man  " ;  and  his  work  has  become  what  he  de- 
sired it  to  be,  a  force  to  soothe  and  heal  the  weary  soul 
of  the  world,  a  power  like  one  of  nature's,  to  strengthen 
or  awaken  the  imagination  in  mankind.  He  lies  asleep 
now  among  the  people  he  loved,  in  the  green  churchyard 
of  Grasmere,  by  th^  side  of  the  stream  of  Rothay,  in  a 
place  as  quiet  as  hi,,  life.  Few  spots  on  earth  are  more 
sacred  than  his  grave. 

150.  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  Wordsworth's  dear  friend, 
and  his  career  as  a  poet  began  with  the  Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstrel,  1805.  But  before  that  he  had  collected, 
inspired  by  his  revolt  from  the  Revolution  to  the  re- 
gretted past,  the  song^:  and  ballads  of  the  Border. 
Marmion  was  published  in  1808,  and  the  Lady  of  the 
Lake  in  18 10.  These  were  his  best  poems;  the  others, 
with  the  exception  of  some  lyrics  which  touch  the  sad- 
ness and  exultation  of  life  with  equal  power,  do  not 
count  in  our  estimate  of  him.  He  brought  the  narrative 
poem  into  a  new  and  delightfjl  excellence.  In  Mar- 
mion and  the  Lady  of  the  Lake  his  wonderful  inventiveness 


Vra  POETRY    FROM    1730   TO    1832  235 

n  story  and  character  is  at  its  height,  and  it  is  matched 
by  the  vividness  of  his  natural  description.  No  poet, 
and  in  this  he  carries  on  the  old  Scottish  quality,  is  a 
finer  colourist.  Nearly  all  his  natural  description  is  of 
the  wild  scenery  of  the  Highlands  and  the  Lowland 
moorland.  He  touched  it  with  a  pencil  so  light,  grace- 
ful, and  true,  that  the  very  names  are  made  forever 
romantic ;  while  his  faithful  love  for  the  places  he  de- 
scribes fills  his  poetry  with  the  finer  spirit  of  his  own 
tender  humanity. 

151.  Scotland  produced  another  poet  in  Thomas 
Campbell.  His  earliest  poem,  the  Pleasures  of  Hope, 
1799,  belonged  in  its  formal  rhythm  and  rhetoric,  and 
in  its  artificial  feeling  for  nature,  to  the  time  of  Thomson 
and  Gray  rather  than  to  the  newer  time.  He  will  chiefly 
live  by  his  lyrics.  Hohenlinden,  the  Battle  of  the  Baltic, 
the  Mariners  of  England,  are  splendid  specimens  of  the 
war  poetry  of  England ;  and  the  Sotig  to  the  Evening  Star 
and  Lord  Ullin's  Daughter,  full  of  tender  feeling,  mark 
the  influence  of  the  more  natural  style  that  Wordsworth 
had  brought  to  excellence. 

152.  Rogers  and  Moore.  — The  Pleasures  of  Memory, 
1792,  and  the  Italy,  1822,  of  Samuel  Rogers,  are  the 
work  of  a  slow  and  cultivated  mind,  and  contain  some 
laboured  but  fine  descriptions.  The  curious  thing  is  that, 
living  apart  in  a  courtly  region  of  culture,  there  is  not  a 
trace  in  all  his  work  that  Europe  and  England  and 
society  had  passed  during  his  life  through  a  convulsion 
of  change.    To  that  convulsion  the  best  poems  of  Thoma? 


236  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAV. 

Moore  may  be  referred.  They  are  the  songs  he  wrote 
to  the  Irish  airs  collected  in  1796.  The  best  of  them 
have  for  their  hidden  subject  the  struggle  of  Ireland 
against  England.  Many  of  them  have  lyrical  beauty  and 
soft  melody.  At  times  they  reach  true  pathos,  but  their 
lightly  lifted  gaiety  is  also  delightful.  He  sang  them 
himself  in  society,  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  they 
helped  by  the  interest  they  stirred  to  further  Catholic 
Emancipation. 

153.  We  turn  to  very  different  types  of  men  when  we 
come  to  Byron,  Shelley,  and  Keats.  Of  the  three,  Lord 
Byron  had  most  of  the  quality  we  call  force.  Born  in 
1788,  his  Hours  of  Idleness,  a  collection  of  short  poems, 
in  1807,  was  mercilessly  lashed  in  the  Edinburgh  Review. 
The  attack  only  served  to  awaken  his  genius,  and  he 
replied  with  astonishing  vigour  in  the  satire  of  English 
Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers  in  1809.  Eastern  travel 
gave  birth  to  the  first  two  cantos  of  Childe  Harold,  181 2, 
to  the  Giaour  and  the  Bride  of  Abydos  in  181 3,  to  the 
Corsair  dxA  Lara  in  1814.  The  Siege  of  Corinth,  Par- 
isina,  the  Prisoner  of  Chillon,  Manfred,  and  Childe 
Harold  were  finished  before  1819.  In  181 8  he  began 
a  new  style  in  Beppo,  which  he  developed  fully  in  the 
successive  issues  of  Don  Juan,  1819-24.  During  this 
time  he  published  a  number  of  dramas,  partly  historical, 
as  his  Marino  Faliero,  partly  imaginative,  as  the  Cain. 
His  life  had  been  wild  and  useless,  but  he  died  in  trying 
to  redeem  it  for  the  sake  of  the  freedom  of  Greece.  At 
Missolonghi  he  was  seized  with  fever,  and  passed  away 
;n  April,  1824. 


Vin  POETRY    FROM    1730   TO    1832  237 

154.  The  Position  of  Byron  as  a  Poet  is  a  curious  one. 
He  is  partly  of  the  past  and  partly  of  the  present.  Some- 
thing of  the  school  of  Pope  clings  to  him ;  yet  no  one  so 
completely  broke  away  from  old  measures  and  old  man- 
ners to  make  his  poetry  individual,  not  imitative.  At 
first,  he  has  no  interest  whatever  in  the  human  questions 
which  were  so  strongly  felt  by  Wordsworth  and  Shelley. 
His  early  work  is  chiefly  narrative  poetry,  written  that 
he  might  talk  of  himself  and  not  of  mankind.  Nor  has 
he  any  philosophy  except  that  which  centres  round  the 
problem  of  his  own  being.  Cain,  the  most  thoughtful 
of  his  productions,  is  in  reality  nothing  more  than  the 
representation  of  the  way  in  which  the  doctrines  of 
original  sin  and  final  reprobation  affected  his  own  soul. 
We  feel  naturally  great  interest  in  this  strong  personality, 
put  before  us  with  such  obstinate  power,  but  it  wearies 
us  at  last.  Finally  it  wearied  himself.  As  he  grew  in 
power,  he  escaped  from  his  morbid  self,  and  ran  into 
the  opposite  extreme  in  Don  Juan.  It  is  chiefly  in  it 
that  he  shows  the  influence  of  the  revolutionary  spirit. 
It  is  written  in  bold  revolt  against  all  the  conventionality 
of  social  morality  and  religion  and  politics.  It  claimed 
for  himself  and  for  others  absolute  freedom  of  individual 
act  and  thought  in  opposition  to  that  force  of  society 
which  tends  to  make  all  men  after  one  pattern.  This 
was  the  best  result  of  his  work,  though  the  way  in  which 
it  was  done  can  scarcely  be  approved.  As  the  poet  of 
nature  he  belongs  also  to  the  old  and  the  new  school. 
Byron's  sympathy  with  nature  is  a  sympathy  with  himself 


238  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

reflected  in  her  moods.  But  he  also  escapes  from  this 
position  of  the  later  eighteenth  century  poets,  and  looks 
on  nature  as  she  is,  apart  from  himself;  and  this  escape 
is  made,  as  in  the  case  of  his  poetry  of  man,  in  his  later 
poems.  Lastly,  it  is  his  colossal  power  and  the  ease  that 
comes  from  it,  in  which  he  resembles  Dryden,  as  well  as 
his  amazing  productiveness,  which  mark  him  specially. 
But  it  is  always  more  power  of  the  intellect  than  of  the 
imagination. 

155.  In  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  on  the  contrary,  the 
imagination  is  first  and  the  intellect  second.  He  pro- 
duced while  yet  a  boy  some  worthless  tales,  but  soon 
showed  in  Queen  Mab,  181 3,  the  influence  of  the  revolu- 
tionary era,  combined  in  him  with  a  violent  attack  on  the 
existing  forms  of  religion.  One  half  of  Shelley's  poetry, 
and  of  his  heart,  was  devoted  to  help  the  world  towards 
the  golden  year  he  prophesied  in  Queen  Mab,  and  to 
denounce  and  overthrow  all  that  stood  in  its  way.  The 
other  half  was  personal,  an  outpouring  of  himself  in  his 
seeking  after  the  perfect  ideal  he  could  not  find,  and, 
sadder  still,  could  not  even  conceive.  Queen  Mab  is  an 
example  of  the  first,  Alas  tor  of  the  second.  The  hopes 
for  man  with  which  Queen  Mab  was  written  grew  cold, 
and  he  turned  from  writing  about  mankind  to  describe 
in  Alastor  the  life  and  wandering  and  death  of  a  lonely 
poet.  But  the  Alastor  who  isolated  the  poet  from  man- 
kind was,  in  Shelley's  own  thought,  a  spirit  of  evil,  and 
his  next  poem,  the  Revolt  of  Islam,  181 7,  unites  him 
again  to  the  interests  of  humanity.    He  wrote  it  with  the 


VIII  POETRY    FROM    1730   TO    1832  239 

hope  that  men  were  beginning  to  recover  from  the  apathy 
and  despair  into  which  the  failure  of  the  revolutionary 
ideas  had  thrown  them,  and  to  show  them  what  they 
should  strive  and  hope  for,  and  destroy.  The  poem 
itself  has  finer  passages  in  it  than  Alas  tor,  but  as  a  whole 
it  is  inferior  to  it.  It  is  far  too  formless.  The  same  year 
Shelley  went  to  Italy,  and  never  returned  to  England. 
He  then  produced  Rosalind  and  Helen  zndi  Julian  and 
Maddalo;  but  the  new  health  and  joy  he  now  gained 
brought  back  his  enthusiasm  for  mankind,  and  he  broke 
out  into  the  splendid  lyric  drama  of  Prometheus  Unbound. 
Asia,  at  the  beginning  of  the  drama  separated  from  Pro- 
metheus, is  the  all-pervading  Love  which  in  loving  makes 
the  universe  of  nature.  When  Prometheus  is  united  to 
Asia,  the  spirit  of  Love  in  man  is  wedded  to  the  spirit  of 
Love  in  nature,  and  all  the  world  of  man  and  nature  is 
redeemed.  The  marriage  of  these  two,  and  the  distinct 
existence  of  each  for  that  purpose,  is  the  same  idea  as 
Wordsworth's  differently  expressed ;  and  Shelley  and  he 
are  the  only  two  poets  who  have  touched  it  philosophi- 
cally, Wordsworth  with  most  contemplation,  Shelley  with 
most  imagination.  Prometheus  Unbound  is  the  finest 
example  we  have  of  the  working  out  in  poetry  of  the  idea 
of  a  regenerated  universe,  and  the  fourth  act  is  the 
choral  song  of  its  emancipation.  Then,  ShslJey,  having 
expressed  this  idea  with  exultant  imagination,  turned  to 
try  his  matured  power  upon  other  subjects.  Two  of 
these  were  neither  personal  nor  for  the  sake  of  man. 
The  first,  the  drama  of  the   Cenci,  is  as  restrained  in 


240  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

expression  as  the  previous  poem  is  exuberant :  yet  there 
is  no  poem  of  Shelley's  in  which  passion  and  thought 
and  imagery  are  so  wrought  together.  The  second  was 
the  Adanais,  a  lament  for  the  death  of  John  Keats.  It 
is  a  poem  written  by  one  who  seems  a  spirit  about  a 
spirit,  and  belongs  in  expression,  thought,  and  feeling  to 
that  world  above  the  senses  in  which  Shelley  habitually 
lived.  Of  all  this  class  of  poems,  to  which  many  of  his 
lyrics  belong,  Epipsychidion  is  the  most  impalpable,  but, 
to  those  who  care  for  Shelley's  ethereal  world,  the  finest 
poem  he  wrote.  Of  the  same  class  is  the  Witch  of  Atlas, 
the  poem  in  which  he  has  personified  divine  Imagination 
in  her  work  in  poetry,  and  imaged  all  her  attendants,  and 
her  doings  among  men. 

As  a  lyric  poet,  Shelley,  on  his  own  ground,  is  easily 
great.  Some  of  the  lyrics  are  purely  personal ;  some,  as 
in  the  very  finest,  the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,  mingle 
together  personal  feeling  and  prophetic  hope  for  man- 
kind. Some  are  lyrics  of  pure  nature ;  some  are  dedi- 
cated to  the  rebuke  of  tyranny  and  the  cause  of  liberty ; 
others  belong  to  the  indefinite  passion  he  called  love, 
and  others  are  written  on  visions  of  those  "  shapes  that 
haunt  Thought's  wildernesses."  They  form  together  the 
most  sensitive,  the  most  imaginative,  and  the  most  musi- 
cal, but  the  least  tangible  lyrical  poetry  we  possess. 

As  the  poet  of  nature,  he  had  the  same  idea  as  Words- 
worth, that  nature  was  alive :  but  while  Wordsworth 
made  the  active  principle  which  filled  and  made  nature 
to   be   Thought,   Shelley  made   it  Love.      The   natural 


Wn  POETRY   FROM    1730   TO    1832  24! 

world  was  dear  then  to  his  soul  as  well  as  to  his  eye, 
but  he  loved  best  its  indefinite  aspects.  He  wants  the 
closeness  of  grasp  of  nature  which  Wordsworth  and  Keats 
had,  but  he  had  the  power  in  a  far  greater  degree  than 
they  of  describing  the  cloud-scenery  of  the  sky,  the 
doings  of  the  great  sea,  and  vast  realms  of  landscape. 
He  is  in  this,  as  well  as  in  his  eye  for  subtle  colour,  the 
Turner  of  poetry.  What  he  might  have  been  we  cannot 
tell,  for  at  the  age  of  thirty  he  left  us,  drowned  in  the  sea 
he  loved,  washed  up  and  burned  on  the  sandy  spits  near 
Pisa.  His  ashes  Ue  beneath  the  walls  of  Rome,  and  Cor 
cordium,  "  Heart  of  hearts,"  written  on  his  tomb,  well 
says  what  all  who  love  poetry  feel  when  they  think  of 
him. 

156.  John  Keats  lies  near  him,  cut  off  like  him  before 
his  genius  ripened ;  not  so  ideal,  but  for  that  very  reason 
more  naturally  at  home  with  nature  than  Shelley.  In 
one  thing  he  was  entirely  different  from  Shelley — he  had 
no  care  whatever  for  the  great  human  questions  which 
stirred  Shelley ;  the  present  was  entirely  without  interest 
to  him.  He  marks  the  close  of  that  poetic  movement 
which  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution  had  crystallised  in 
England,  as  Shelley  marks  the  attempt  to  revive  it. 
Keats,  seeing  nothing  to  move  him  in  an  age  which  had 
now  sunk  into  apathy  on  these  points,  went  back  to 
Spenser,  and  especially  to  Shakespeare's  minor  poems, 
to  find  his  inspiration;  to  Greek  and  mediaeval  life  to 
find  his  subjects,  and  established,  in  doing  so,  that  which 
has  been  called  the  literary  poetry  of  England.     Leigh 


242  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Hunt,  his  friend  and  Shelley's,  did  part  of  this  work. 
The  first  subject  on  which  Keats  worked,  after  some 
minor  poems  in  181 7,  was  Endymion,  181 8,  his  last, 
Hyperion,  1820.  These,  along  with  Lamia,  which  is,  on 
the  whole,  the  finest  of  his  longer  poems,  were  poems  of 
Greek  life.  Endymion  has  all  the  faults  and  all  the 
promise  of  a  great  poet's  early  work,  and  no  one  knew 
its  faults  better  than  Keats,  whose  preface  is  a  model  of 
just  self-judgment.  Hyperion,  a  fragment  of  a  tale  of  the 
overthrow  of  the  Titans,  is  itself  like  a  Titanic  torso.  Its 
rhythm  was  derived  from  Milton,  but  its  poetry  is  wholly 
his  own.  But  the  mind  of  Keats  was  as  yet  too  luxuriant 
to  support  the  greatness  of  his  subject's  argument,  and 
the  poem  dies  away.  It  is  beautiful,  even  in  death. 
Both  poems  are  filled  with  that  which  was  deepest  in  the 
mind  of  Keats,  the  love  of  loveliness  for  its  own  sake, 
the  sense  of  its  rightful  and  pre-eminent  power ;  and  in 
the  singleness  of  worship  which  he  gave  to  Beauty,  Keats 
is  especially  the  ideal  poet.  Then  he  took  us  back  into 
mediaeval  romance,  and  in  this  also  he  started  a  new 
type  of  poetry.  There  are  two  poems  which  mark  this 
revival  —  Isabella,  and  the  Eve  of  St.  Agnes.  Mediaeval 
in  subject,  they  are  modern  in  manner;  but  they  are, 
above  all,  of  the  poet  himself.  Their  magic  is  all  his 
own.  In  smaller  poems,  such  as  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian 
Urn,  the  poem  To  Autumn,  to  the  Nightingale,  and 
some  sonnets,  he  is  the  fairest  of  all  Apollo's  children. 
He  knew  the  inner  soul  of  words.  He  felt  the  world 
where  ideas  and  their  forms  are  one,  where  n^-ture  9,nd 


Vin  POETRY  FROM    1730  TO    1832  243 

humanity,  before  they  divide,  flow  from  a  single  source. 
In  all  his  poems,  his  painting  of  nature  is  as  close  as 
Wordsworth's,  but  more  ideal ;  less  full  of  the  imagina- 
tion that  links  human  thought  to  nature,  but  more  full  of 
the  imagination  which  broods  upon  enjoyment  of  beauty. 
He  was  not  much  interested  in  human  questions,  but  as 
his  mind  grew,  humanity  made  a  more  and  more  impera- 
tive call  upon  him.  Had  he  lived,  his  poetry  would  have 
dealt  more  closely  with  the  heart  of  man.  His  letters, 
some  of  the  most  original  in  the  English  language,  show 
this  clearly.  The  second  draft  of  Hyperion,  unpublished 
in  his  Hfetime,  and  inferior  as  poetry  to  the  first,  accuses 
himself  of  apartness  from  mankind,  and  expresses  his 
resolve  to  write  of  Man,  the  greatest  subject  of  all. 
Whether  he  could  have  done  this  well  remains  unknown. 
His  career  was  short;  he  had  scarcely  begun  to  write 
when  death  took  him  away  from  the  loveliness  he  loved 
so  keenly.  Consumption  drove  him  to  Rome,  and  there 
he  died,  save  for  one  friend,  alone.  He  Ues  not  far 
from  Shelley,  on  the  "  slope  of  green  access,"  near  the 
pyramid  of  Caius  Cestius.  He  sleeps  apart ;  he  is  him- 
self a  world  apart. 

157.  Modern  English  Poetry.  —  Keats  marks  the  ex- 
haustion of  the  impulse  which  began  with  Burns  and 
Cowper.  There  was  no  longer  now  in  England  any 
large  wave  of  public  thought  or  feeling  such  as  could 
awaken  the  national  emotion  and  life  out  of  which  poetry 
is  naturally  born.  We  have  then,  arising  after  the  deaths 
of  Keats,  Shelley,  and  Byron,  a  number  of  pretty  little 


244  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

poems,  having  no  inward  fire,  no  idea,  no  marked  char- 
acter. They  might  be  written  by  any  versifier  at  any 
time,  and  express  pleasant,  indifferent  thought  in  pleas- 
ant verse.  Such  were  Mrs.  Hemans'  poems,  and  those 
of  L.  E.  L.,  and  such  were  Tennyson's  eariiest  poems,  in 
1830.  There  were,  however,  a  few  men  who,  close  to 
1820  and  1822,  had  drunk  at  the  fountain  of  Shelley,  and 
who,  for  a  very  brief  time,  continued,  amid  the  apathy, 
to  write  with  some  imagination  and  fervour.  T.  L.  Bed- 
does,  whose  only  valuable  work  was  done  between  1822 
and  1825,  was  one  of  these.  George  Darley,  whose  Sylvia 
earned  the  praise  of  Coleridge,  was  another.  They  rep- 
resent in  their  imitation  of  Shelley,  in  their  untutored 
imagination,  the  last  struggles  of  the  poetic  phase  which 
closed  with  the  death  of  Byron.  When  Browning  imitated 
or  rather  loved  Shelley  in  his  first  poem,  Pauline,  it  was 
to  bid  Shelley  farewell ;  when  Tennyson  imitated  Byron 
and  was  haunted  by  Keats  in  his  first  poems,  it  was  also 
to  bid  them  both  farewell.  Then  Tennyson  and  Browning 
passed  on  to  strike  unexpected  waters  out  of  the  rocks 
and  to  pour  two  rivers  of  fresh  poetry  over  the  world. 
For  with  the  Reform  agitation,  and  the  twofold  religious 
movement  at  Oxford,  which  was  of  the  same  date,  a 
novel  national  excitement  came  on  England,  and  with 
it  the  new  tribe  of  poets  arose  among  whom  we  have 
lived.  The  elements  of  their  poetry  were  also  new, 
though  we  can  trace  their  beginnings  in  the  previous 
poetry.  This  poetry  took  up,  so  far  as  Art  could  touch 
them,  the  theological,  social,  and  even  the  political  ques- 


vm  POETRY   FROM    173O  TO    1832  245 

tions  which  disturbed  England.  It  came,  before  long, 
moved  by  the  critical  and  scientific  inquiries  into  the 
origins  of  religion  and  man  and  the  physical  world,  to 
represent  the  scepticism  of  England  and  the  struggle 
for  faith  against  doubt.  It  gave  itself  t  metaphysics, 
but  chiefly  under  the  expression  and  analysis  of  the 
characters  of  men  and  women.  It  played  with  a  vast 
variety  of  subjects,  and  treated  them  all  with  a  personal 
passion  which  filled  them  with  emotion.  It  worked 
out,  from  the  point  of  view  of  deep  feeling,  the  relation 
of  man  to  God,  and  of  man  to  sorrow  and  immor- 
tality. It  studied  and  brought  to  great  excellence  the 
Idyll,  the  Song,  and  the  short  poem  on  classic  subjects 
with  a  reference  to  modern  life.  It  increased,  to  an 
amazing  extent,  the  lyrical  poetry  of  England.  The 
short  lyric  was  never  written  in  such  numbers  and  of 
such  excellence  since  the  days  of  Elizabeth.  It  recapt- 
ured and  clothed  in  a  new  dress  the  Arthurian  tale,  and 
linked  us,  back  through  many  poets,  to  the  days  of 
legend  and  delight.  It  re-established  for  us  in  this  new 
time,  as  the  most  natural  and  most  emotional  subject  of 
English  poetry,  England,  her  history,  her  people,  and 
her  landscape,  so  that  the  new  poets  have  described  not 
only  the  whole  land  but  the  natural  scenery  and  histori- 
cal story,  the  human  and  animal  life  of  the  separate 
counties.  Our  native  land,  as  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth, 
has  been  ideaUsed. 

Nor  did  this  new  impulse  stay  in  England  only.     It 
went  abroad  for  its  subjects,  and  especially  to  Italy.     It 


246  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Strove  to  express  the  main  characteristics  of  periods  of 
history  and  of  art,  of  the  origins  of  religions  and  of  Chris- 
tianity, of  classic  and  Renaissance  thought  at  critical 
times,  and  of  lyric  passion  in  modern  life.  Indeed,  it 
aimed  at  a  universal  representation  of  human  life  and 
at  a  subtle  characterisation  of  individual  temperaments. 
Thus,  it  was  a  poetry  of  England,  and  also  of  the  larger 
world  beyond  England. 

Apart  from  the  main  stream  of  poetry,  there  were 
separate  streams  which  represented  distinct  passages  in 
the  general  movement.  The  Sonnets  of  Charles  Tenny- 
son Turner,  which  began  in  1830,  stand  by  their  grace 
and  tenderness  at  the  head  of  a  large  production  of 
poetry  which  describes  with  him  the  shy,  sequestered, 
observant  life  of  the  English  scholar  and  lover  of  nature, 
of  country  piety  and  country  people.  One  man  among 
them  stands  alone,  WiUiam  Barnes,  of  Dorsetshire.  The 
time  will  come  when  the  dialect  in  which  he  wrote  will 
cease  to  prevent  the  lovers  of  poetry  from  appreciating 
at  its  full  worth  a  poetry  which,  written  in  the  mother- 
tongue  of  the  poor  and  of  his  own  heart,  is  as  close  to 
the  lives  and  souls  of  simple  folk  as  it  is  to  the  woods 
and  streams,  the  skies  and  farms  of  rustic  England. 
Among  them  also  is  Coventry  Patmore,  who,  though 
alive,  belongs  to  the  past.  What  Barnes  did  for  the 
peasant  and  the  farmer,  Patmore  did  for  the  cultivated 
life  which  in  quiet  English  counties  gathers  round  the 
church,  the  parsonage,  and  the  hall,  the  lives  and  piety 
of  the  English  homes  that  are  still  the  haunts  of  ancient 


Vin  POETRY    FROM    1730   TO    1832  247 

peace.  His  work,  with  its  retired  and  careful  if  over- 
delicate  note,  is  a  true  picture  of  a  small  part  of  English 
life.     But  it  has  the  faults  of  its  excellences. 

The  High  Church  and  Broad  Church  movements,  as 
they  were  called,  produced  two  sets  of  poetical  writers  who 
also  stand  somewhat  apart  from  the  main  line  of  English 
poetry.  The  first  is  best  represented  by  John  Keble, 
whose  Christian  Year,  in  1827,  with  its  poetry,  so  good 
within  its  own  range,  so  weak  beyond  it,  was  the  source 
of  many  books  of  poems  of  a  similar  but  inferior  char- 
acter. On  the  other  hand  the  impulse  towards  a  wider 
theology  was  combined  in  some  poets  with  a  laxer  moral- 
ity than  England  is  accustomed  to  maintain,  and  Bailey's 
Festus,  1839,  was  the  first  of  a  number  of  sensational 
poems  which  painted  the  struggles  of  the  spirit  towards 
immortal  life,  and  of  the  senses  towards  mortal  love  with 
equal  effervescence.  A  noble  translation  of  Omar 
Khayyam  by  Edward  Fitzgerald,  and  the  fine  ballad-songs 
and  Andromeda  of  Charles  Kingsley,  may  also  be  said  to 
flow  apart  from  the  main  stream  in  which  poetry  flowed. 

Alfred  Tennyson  and  Robert  Browning  (whose  wife 
will  justly  share  his  fame)  began  to  write  between  1830 
and  1833,  and  continued  their  work  side  by  side  for  fifty 
years,  when  they  died,  almost  together.  Both  of  them 
were  wholly  original,  and  both  of  them,  differing  at  every 
point  of  their  art,  kept  with  extraordinary  vitality  their 
main  powers,  and  were  capable  of  fresh  invention,  even 
to  the  very  last.  They  passed  through  a  long  period  of 
change  and  development,  during  which  all  the  existing 


248  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

foundations  of  faith  and  knowledge  and  art  were  dug  out, 
investigated,  tested,  and  an  attempt  made  to  reconstruct 
them,  an  attempt  which  still  pursues  its  work.  They 
lived  and  wrote  in  sympathy  with  the  emotions  which 
this  long  struggle  created  in  the  minds  of  men,  and  ex- 
pressed as  much  of  these  emotions  as  naturally  fell  within 
their  capability  and  within  the  sphere  of  poetry.  And 
this  they  did  with  great  eagerness  and  intensity.  Their 
love  of  beauty  and  of  their  art  was  unbroken,  and  they 
had  as  much  power,  as  they  had  desire,  to  shape  the 
thought  and  the  loveliness  they  saw  —  great  poets  who 
have  illuminated,  impelled,  adorned,  and  exalted  the 
world  in  which  we  live. 

At  first  the  great  inquiry  into  the  roots  of  things  dis- 
turbed the  next  generation  of  poets,  those  who  stepped 
to  the  front  between  1850  and  i860  ;  and  as  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough  expressed  the  trouble  of  the  want  of  clear  light 
on  the  fates  of  men  and  their  only  refuge  in  duty,  so 
Matthew  Arnold,  more  deeply  troubled,  embodied  in  his 
poetry,  even  in  his  early  book  of  1852,  the  restlessness, 
the  dimness,  the  hopelessness  of  a  world  which  had  lost 
the  vision  of  the  ancient  stars  and  could  cUng  to  nothing 
but  a  stoic  conduct.  But  he  did  this  with  keen  sorrow, 
and  with  a  vivid  interest  in  the  world  around  him.  Then 
about  i860  the  poets  grew  weary  of  the  whole  struggle. 
Theology,  the  just  aim  and  ends  of  Hfe,  science,  political 
and  social  questions,  ceased  on  the  whole  to  awaken  the 
slightest  interest  in  them.  Exactly  that  which  took  place 
in  the  case  of  Keats  now  took  place.     The  poets  sought 


VIII  POETRY   FROM   1730  TO    1832  249 

only  for  what  was  beautiful,  romantic,  of  ancient  heroism, 
far  from  a  tossed  and  wearied  world,  far  from  all  its 
tiresome  questions.  Dante  G.  Rossetti,  whose  sister, 
Christina,  touched  the  romantic  and  religious  lyric  with 
original  beauty,  was  the  leader  of  this  school.  He,  and 
others  still  alive,  found  their  chief  subjects  in  ancient 
Rome  and  Greece,  in  stories  and  lyrics  of  passion,  in 
mediaeval  romance,  in  Norse  legends,  in  the  old  England 
of  Chaucer,  and  in  Italy.  But  this  literary  poetry  has 
now  almost  ceased  to  be  produced,  and  has  been  suc- 
ceeded as  in  1825  by  a  vast  criticism  of  poetry,  and  by  a 
multitudinous  production,  much  inspired  from  France,  of 
poetry,  chiefly  lyrical,  which  has  few  elements  of  endur- 
ance and  little  relation  to  life.  What  will  emerge  from 
this  we  cannot  tell,  but  we  only  need  some  new  human 
inspiration,  having  a  close  relation  to  the  present,  and 
bearing  with  it  a  universal  emotion,  to  create  in  England 
another  school  of  poetry  as  great  as  that  which  arose  in 
the  beginning  of  this  century,  and  worthy  of  the  tradi- 
tions which  have  made  England  the  creator  and  lover  of 
poetry  for  more  than  1200  years. 


250  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 


CHAPTER  IX 

PROSE    LITERATURE    FROM   THE    DEATH    OF    SCOTT   TO    THE 
DEATH  OF   GEORGE   ELIOT    (l 83 2-1 88 1) 

158.  The  Growth  of  the  Reading  Public.  —  It  has  been 
pointed  out  (page  196)  that,  with  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  there  began  in  England  a  period  of 
rapid  increase  in  manufactures,  science,  and  prosperity, 
which  was  paralleled  by  a  remarkable  growth  in  litera- 
ture. This  increase  in  material  welfare  has  continued 
throughout  the  nineteenth  century.  Science  has  made 
greater  progress  within  a  hundred  years  than  within  the 
five  preceding  centuries,  and  the  discoveries  of  science 
have  affected  in  a  most  wonderful  way  the  lives  of  men. 
The  greater  part  of  the  population  of  Great  Britain,  even 
people  of  the  smallest  means,  may  live  in  accordance 
with  nature's  laws,  supplied  with  proper  food,  water, 
clothing,  and  shelter,  and  free  from  dangerous  epi- 
demics. Laws  have  given  greater  liberty  to  the  indi- 
vidual, have  mitigated  the  lot  of  the  poor  and  unfortunate, 
and  have  helped  to  reform  the  vicious.  Improvements 
in  machinery,  the  growth  of  commerce,  and  the  colonisa- 
tion of  new  lands,  have  aided  in  the  greater  diffusion  of 


IX         PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1 832  TO    l88l         2$ I 

wealth  among  the  people;  and,  though  various  industrial 
and  economic  causes  still  tend  to  crowd  the  poor  into 
unhealthy  districts  of  large  cities,  and  deprive  them  of 
the  full  rewards  of  their  labour,  it  is,  in  the  main,  true 
that,  in  point  of  material  welfare,  the  average  English- 
man has  at  his  command  far  more  means  towards  health 
and  happiness  than  he  would  have  had  a  century  ago. 
Education,  too,  is  more  widely  spread:  we  all  know 
more  of  the  essential  facts  of  history  and  principles  of 
science,  have  a  truer  idea  of  what  life  means,  and  are 
thus  better  prepared  to  enjoy  and  appreciate  literature. 

This  increase  in  material  prosperity  has  been  accom- 
panied by  a  remarkable  growth  in  population.  In  1800 
the  population  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  was  about 
15,000,000.  In  1899  it  is  about  40,000,000.  If, 
moreover,  we  would  estimate  the  present  extent  of  the 
English-speaking  race,  we  must  add  to  these  40,000,000 
the  even  greater  population  of  the  United  States,  as  well 
as  the  English-speaking  population  of  the  colonies  and 
possessions  of  Great  Britain  in  various  parts  of  the  world. 
The  total  would  probably  exceed  125,000,000. 

With  this  growth  of  English-speaking  people  in  many 
separate  lands,  it  has  come  about  that  each  of  the  large 
bodies  of  the  race  has  developed,  to  some  extent,  its 
own  special  literature;  and  within  a  century  it  will 
probably  be  necessary  to  discuss,  not  only  the  literature 
of  England  itself,  but  that  of  Canada  and  Australia,  just 
as,  in  subsequent  chapters,  we  find  it  necessary  to  treat 
briefly  of  literature  in  the  United  States  of  America,  or, 


252  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

as  it  is  loosely  called,  American  literature.  For  the 
present  we  can  afford  to  neglect,  in  a  sketch  of  English 
literature,  the  literature  of  the  British  colonies;  but  it  is 
important  that  we  should  remember  that  the  boundaries 
of  the  reading  public  are  no  longer  those  of  the  times  of 
Addison,  when  there  was  little  writing  outside  of  Lon- 
don, and  authors  there  felt  that  they  were  addressing 
largely  their  own  immediate  circle  of  friends  and  fellow- 
citizens.  For,  though  no  one  book,  except  the  Bible, 
can  be  known  to  even  a  majority  of  the  great  total 
referred  to,  any  book  in  English  may,  according  to  the 
degree  to  which  it  is  fitted  to  instruct  and  entertain  the 
people,  reach  the  hands  of  multitudes  of  men,  women, 
and  children,  not  only  in  England,  but  wherever  the 
English  tongue  is  spoken.  The  English  language,  too, 
has  become  so  important  that  it  is  understood  by  many 
cultivated  people  of  other  nationalities,  so  that  an  Eng- 
lish book  of  merit  may  also  be  read  in  all  civilised 
countries.  The  city-audience  of  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century  has  thus,  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  become  almost  a  world-audience. 

Many  changes,  similar  to  those  mentioned  in  pages 
196-98,  have  also  come  about  in  the  tastes  and  needs  of 
the  wide  public  to  whom  the  literature  of  this  century 
is  addressed :  — 

(i)  As  has  been  explained  above  (page  196),  a  good 
prose  style  has  been  inherited  from  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury and  has  been  perfected  in  this  century.  Educated 
men  are  bom,  as  it  were,  into  a  good  school  of  compo- 


IX  PROSE    LITERATURE    FROM    1832    TO    1881  253 

sition,  and,  profiting  by  the  experience  of  their  prede- 
cessors, do  not  now  have  to  discover  for  themselves  how 
to  make  their  meaning  clear  and  their  style  effective. 

(2)  The  increase  in  health,  wealth,  and  comfort  on 
the  part  of  the  people  at  large  has  given  us  leisure  to 
read  and  means  to  purchase  books,  while  the  extraordi- 
nary development  of  railways  and  of  postal  and  tele- 
graph systems  has,  in  many  respects,  made  each  of  the 
English-speaking  nations  almost  a  unit  in  feeling,  and 
has  greatly  increased  the  bonds  of  sympathy  and  under- 
standing between  them.  The  whole  race  may  know 
almost  immediately  what  is  known  and  felt  by  any  large 
body  of  individuals  in  it.  The  common  interests  of  the 
race  are  thus  emphasised,  and  the  thought  of  any  indi- 
vidual stimulated  and  broadened  by  his  acquaintance 
with  the  experience  of  his  brothers. 

(3)  The  same  and  similar  causes  have  given  a  great 
impetus  to  the  press.  Not  only  are  many  more  books 
printed  than  formerly;  not  only  have  newspapers  in- 
creased rapidly  in  numbers  and  circulation;  but  there 
has  arisen  a  host  of  periodicals,  published  weekly  or  at 
longer  intervals,  devoted  less  to  news  than  to  literature, 
which  together  reach  a  large  part  of  the  reading  public. 
It  may  even  be  doubted  whether  the  reading  of  people, 
at  the  end  of  the  century,  does  not  consist  less  of  books 
than  of  periodicals  of  various  sorts,  including  news- 
papers. This  enormous  growth  of  periodical  literature 
has  been  rendered  possible  by  the  inventions  that  make 
printing  less  costly  and  more  rapid,  and  by  the  fact  that 


254  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

periodicals  receive  for  the  advertising  of  merchandise 
large  sums  which  may  be  drawn  upon  for  the  payment 
of  authors  and  artists.  Books  and  periodicals  have 
become  cheaper,  and,  through  the  better  organisation  of 
the  publishing  trade,  more  easily  obtainable.  It  is  now 
possible  to  procure,  for  a  comparatively  small  sum,  a 
library  which  even  fifty  years  ago  would  have  been 
beyond  the  means  of  any  but  the  rich. 

(4)  It  has  been  remarked  (page  197)  that  in  the 
eighteenth  century  communication  with  the  continent 
of  Europe  increased,  so  that  English  literature  stimu- 
lated that  of  other  European  nations,  and  was  in  turn 
stimulated  by  them.  This  process  still  continues.  The 
civilised  world  has  in  some  respects  become  a  single 
body,  for  purposes  of  culture;  and  ideas  or  works  of 
art  that  appeal  strongly  to  one  nation  have  their  influ- 
ence upon  all.  With  regard  to  English  literature  more 
particularly,  it  is  noteworthy  that  a  similar  process  has 
tended  to  remove  the  barriers  between  different  classes 
of  the  reading  public.  The  reduction  in  the  price  of 
printed  matter;  the  increase  in  the  amount;  the  growth 
of  rapid  communication;  the  consequent  increase  in 
knowledge,  on  the  part  of  each  individual  or  commu- 
nity, of  what  is  thought  and  done  by  other  individuals 
or  communities;  the  industrial  and  legal  changes  that 
have  tended  to  obliterate  the  differences  in  experience 
and  opportunity  between  rich  and  poor;  the  decay  of 
social  distinctions;  the  increase  in  education  among  all 
classes, — all  these  have  assisted  in  bringing  about  a 


IX         PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1832  TO    i88l         255 

remarkable  unity  of  sentiment.  An  author  may  feel 
not  only  that  he  addresses  a  large  audience,  but  that  he 
is,  to  a  great  degree,  in  sympathy  with  large  and  appar- 
ently diverse  portions  of  that  audience.  Nor  is  he 
addressing  men  alone,  for,  from  the  eighteenth  century 
on,  with  new  opportunities  for  education,  women  have 
constituted  an  increasingly  large  part  of  the  English 
reading  public,  which  is  now  composed  of  both  sexes 
and  of  all  classes,  in  many  lands. 

The  expansion  of  the  reading  public,  which  is  char- 
acteristic of  this  century  and  which  has  been  described 
above,  and  the  accompanying  increase  in  the  production 
of  printed  matter,  make  it  exceedingly  difficult  to  sum- 
marise the  history  of  English  literature  in  this  century. 
We  must  limit  ourselves  by  speaking,  with  only  the  rarest 
exceptions,  of  men  no  longer  living,  and  of  English 
authors  who  have  exerted  a  strong  influence  on  the  more 
thoughtful  parts  of  this  public.  We  must  necessarily 
omit  many  such  authors,  but  we  must  be  careful  not  to 
include  authors  whose  works,  though  they  were  widely 
circulated  and  became  favourites  with  large  numbers  of 
people,  have  failed  to  exert  a  permanent  influence,  and, 
with  slight  changes  of  the  popular  taste,  have  passed  into 
oblivion. 

159.  The  Victorian  Age.  —  The  period  of  prosperity 
which  dawned  upon  England  at  about  the  time  of  Queen 
Victoria's  accession  to  the  throne,  and  which  has  lasted 
throughout  the  century,  has  been  attended  by  an  intel- 
lectual and  emotional  awakening  of  the  nation,  of  which 


256  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  growth  of  the  reading  public  is  merely  a  sign.  In 
the  fine  arts,  in  the  industrial  arts,  in  pure  and  applied 
science,  —  in  all  branches  of  human  activity,  —  the 
period  has  been  one  of  continuous  development.  The 
literature  of  the  period  has  been  remarkable  for  its 
variety  and  excellence,  not  only  in  poetry,  but  in  the 
several  branches  of  prose.  It  has  been  lacking  only  in 
the  drama,  which  has  been  so  inconspicuous  that  we 
need  not  again  refer  to  it.  This  lack  seems  to  be  mainly 
due  to  the  fact  that,  following  the  line  of  Scott's  suc- 
cesses, authors  have  cultivated  the  novel,  which  has 
throughout  the  century  been  the  most  profitable  branch 
of  literature,  and  to  the  fact  that  until  recently  it  has 
been  possible  for  the  managers  of  theatres  to  please  their 
audiences  by  the  translation  or  adaptation  of  clever 
French  plays. 

160.  The  Romantic  School  in  Prose. — The  romantic 
school  in  poetry  has  been  clearly  described  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter  (pages  213-18).  From  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century  on,  men  had  been  turning  away  from 
the  more  formal  classic  models,  and  had  been  increas- 
ingly influenced  by  earlier  English  poetry,  by  the 
quaintness  and  romance  of  mediaeval  life,  by  a  desire 
to  make  use  of  the  more  impressive  elements  of  verse, 
and,  especially,  by  a  growing  sympathy  for  that  in  life 
which  had  the  greatest  emotional  value.  Under  such 
influences  the  poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century  became, 
in  many  respects,  radically  different  from  that  of  the 
eighteenth.     The  same  influences  were  working  to  trans- 


IX         PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1 832   TO    1881         257 

form  prose  literature,  both  in  matter  and  in  style.  As 
to  matter,  it  will  be  noticed  that  in  this  century  writers 
have  been  deeply  interested  in  the  emotional  life  of  the 
past  and  the  present,  tending  in  novels  to  the  narration 
of  stirring  incidents  or  the  portrayal  of  striking  types, 
and,  in  other  forms  of  prose,  to  whatever  moved  the 
hearts  of  the  people  through  beauty,  sympathy,  sense  of 
contrast,  or  the  embodiment  of  vigorous  ideals.  They 
have  been  anxious  to  draw  on  all  material  that  would 
incite  us  to  tears  or  laughter,  or  that  would  fill  us  with 
enthusiasm,  or  that  seemed  to  involve  impressive  or 
impelling  truths.  This  impulse  has  been,  to  a  great 
extent,  shared  by  the  other  great  European  literatures. 
It  has  persisted  throughout  the  century,  and  is  still,  in 
a  somewhat  modified  form,  a  dominant  force. 

161.  The  Scientific  Movement.  —  Less  easily  recog- 
nised, less  often  flowering  into  great  literature,  there 
runs  throughout  the  period  a  strong  impulse  towards 
research  and  observation,  towards  the  accurate  and  dis- 
passionate statement  of  the  full  truth  in  all  branches  of 
human  knowledge.  In  science,  men  who  appreciated 
the  grandeur  and  dignity  of  their  calling  have  made 
efforts  to  make  clear  to  the  common  people  the  results 
of  organised  investigation;  in  history  and  economics, 
to  make  clear  the  real  purport  of  past  and  present  events 
and  the  principles  of  human  action  involved;  and  in 
philosophy,  theology,  and  kindred  subjects  of  enquiry, 
to  learn  the  truth  at  all  costs  and  to  reproduce  it  faith- 
fully. In  the  novel  a  similar  impulse,  common  to  most 
9 


258  ENGLISH  LITERATURE  chap. 

modem  literatures,  has  led  some  writers  to  a  more  de- 
tailed observation  of  the  facts  of  life,  and  to  the  presen- 
tation of  them  in  a  less  fanciful  fashion.  This  method 
is  called  "  realism."  It  was  at  first  feared  that  the  whole 
scientific  movement  would  tend  to  weaken  the  power  of 
the  imagination  in  literature;  but  there  seems  to  be 
room  in  our  hearts  for  both  interests,  —  that  in  life  as 
portrayed  by  the  skilled  observer  and  that  in  life  as 
portrayed  by  the  man  of  imagination,  —  and  it  is  grow- 
ing clearer  that  the  two  can  often  be  combined. 

162.  Prose  Style  in  the  Nineteenth  Century. — By 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  a  good  prose  style 
had  already  been  formed.  It  was  clear  and  orderly,  — 
the  courteous  language  of  accomplished  gentlemen,  — 
and  was  free  from  the  intricacy  and  eccentricity  of  earlier 
periods.  In  Goldsmith  it  was  simple  and  flowing;  in 
Johnson,  dignified,  if  not  pompous;  in  Burke  and  Gib- 
bon, sonorous.  In  the  nineteenth  century  the  essential 
qualities  of  clearness  and  dignity  have  been  perpetuated; 
but  we  have  also  learned  to  expect,  in  prose  literature, 
a  certain  melody  or  singing  quality,  as  if  the  writer  were 
appealing  to  the  ear  even  more  than  to  the  eye;  and, 
even  when  this  is  absent,  at  least  an  earnest  eloquence, 
as  is  appropriate  when  the  appeal  is  to  the  emotions  as 
well  as  to  the  intellect. 

163.  The  Novel.  —  From  Defoe  to  Scott  the  hold  of 
the  novel  on  the  public  grew  stronger.  Each  great 
novelist,  moreover,  added  something  to  the  development 
of  his  art.     Defoe  taught  his  skill  in  arousing  curiosity; 


nt  PROSE   LITERATURE    FROM    1832   TO    1881         259 

Richardson,  the  use  of  detail  and  of  sentiment;  Field- 
ing, the  creation  of  characters  that  have  all  the  sem- 
blance of  reality;  Smollett,  the  force  of  rough  humour 
and  the  sketching  of  whimsical  characters;  Miss  Austen, 
the  building  up  of  characters  through  minute  observa- 
tion. Scott  first  gave  the  modern  public  the  taste  for 
the  rapidly  moving  tale  of  romantic  adventure. 

Dickens  succeeded  Scott  as  a  popular  favourite,  but 
before  taking  him  up  we  must  speak  of  several  novelists 
of  less  importance  in  the  early  part  of  the  century. 
Frederick  Marryat  followed  Smollett  in  his  rough  tales 
of  sea  life,  the  best  of  which  are  Peter  Simple  (1834) 
and  Mr.  Midshipman  Easy  (1836).  Full  of  eccentric 
characters,  practical  jokes,  and  amusing  incidents,  they 
portrayed  so  admirably  the  bluff  and  hearty  side  of 
active  life  as  long  to  keep  their  freshness  and  charm. 
Charles  Lever,  an  Irishman,  in  Charles  O^Malley 
(1841)  and  many  other  tales  of  the  same  sort,  did  for 
the  army  what  Marryat  did  for  the  navy.  His  novels 
are  weak  in  plot,  but  full  of  dashing  adventure  and 
bubbling  over  with  merriment.  Benjamin  Disraeli, 
Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  the  great  Tory  statesman,  was 
the  author  of  many  novels  dealing  with  fashionable 
life,  of  which  the  best  are  perhaps  Coningsby  (1844) 
and  Sybil  (1845),  which  have  in  common  the  motive 
of  explaining  the  principles  and  ideals  on  which  he 
based  the  reconstruction  of  his  party.  Loose  in  plot, 
but  brilliant  in  style,  they  won  the  public  partly 
through  their  cleverness,    partly   because    they    dealt 


260  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  chap. 

with  the  rich  and  the  great,  and  partly  because  they  are 
mainly  biographies,  as  it  were,  of  ardent,  impression- 
able, and  ambitious  minds.  They  are  likewise  remark- 
able because  in  them,  for  the  first  time  in  English 
literature,  were  revealed  the  brilliance  and  wisdom  of 
the  Jewish  race.  Edward  Lytton  Bulwer,  Lord  Lytton, 
more  commonly  known  as  Bulwer- Lytton,  wrote  a  long 
series  of  novels  with  the  definite  purpose  of  entertaining 
the  public.  They  were  of  many  sorts,  as  became  his 
versatile  genius,  and  were  received  with  favour  partly 
because,  like  Disraeli's,  they  drew  many  of  their  charac- 
ters from  high  life,  of  which  the  growing  multitude  of 
readers  heard  with  delight,  but  chiefly  because  they  often 
dealt  with  mystery  and  crime,  and  because,  again  like 
Disraeli's  tales,  they  followed  Byron's  narrative  poems 
in  presenting,  in  an  heroic  light,  men  of  great  ambition, 
whether  for  good  or  for  ill.  Romanticism  worshipped 
the  individual  whose  spirit  was  high  and  whose  will  was 
strong.  The  novel  of  Bulwer- Lytton 's  that  retains  its 
interest  most  permanently  is  The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii 
(1834),  which  is  fortunate  in  having  as  its  theme  one 
of  the  most  tragic  events  in  all  history.  George  Bor- 
Row's  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  Gypsies  and  his 
experiences  as  a  colporteur  in  Spain  gave  him  material 
for  The  Bible  in  Spain  (1843),  Lavengro  (185 1),  and 
other  volumes  of  romantic  adventure.  To  Charlotte 
Bronte  belongs  the  distinction  of  having  produced  per- 
haps the  most  typical  English  novel  of  the  Romantic 
school,  ya«<f  Eyre  (1847),  the  heroine  of  which  conceals 


IX  PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1832   TO    1881         26 1 

an  indomitable  will  under  the  exterior  of  a  quiet  and 
plain  governess,  on  whom  is  centred  the  fiery  passion 
of  a  grim  hero  of  higher  station. 

The  real  successor  of  Scott,  however,  was  Charles 
Dickens,  who,  from  Pickwick  Papers  (1837)  to  Our 
Mutual  Friend  (1865),  poured  forth  a  series  of  re- 
markable novels,  which  were  read  wherever  the  English 
tongue  was  known,  and  which  made  their  author  beloved 
from  the  palace  of  the  prince  to  the  camp  of  the  Cali- 
fornian  miner.  If  Scott  was  the  Wizard  of  the  North, 
Dickens  was  the  Wizard  of  the  South.  He  had  Scott's 
genius  for  story-telling;  he  knew  the  way  to  the  hearts 
of  the  people;  and,  at  a  time  when  the  uniformity  of 
modern  life  was  beginning  to  do  away  with  many  of  the 
external  differences  between  persons  and  places,  he  fol- 
lowed Smollett  in  creating  a  host  of  odd  characters, 
taken  largely  from  the  ranks  of  the  poor  and  the  humble. 
These  fantastic  figures  he  produced  in  such  numbers  and 
with  such  vitality  that  they  form  a  little  world  of  their 
own;  and  we  often  say  of  odd  people  that  they  look  as 
if  they  had  stepped  from  the  pages  of  Dickens.  His 
tales  all  appeal  strongly  to  the  emotions,  sometimes  by 
humour,  sometimes  by  horror  or  pathos.  They  all  have 
a  strong  dramatic  element,  —  are  now  farcical,  now 
melodramatic,  and,  at  their  best,  delightful  comedies. 
His  queer  characters  have  the  semblance  of  life,  but  we 
feel  them  to  be  creatures  of  the  fancy,  who  could  not 
exist  in  an  actual  world.  In  spite  of  this,  he  was  a  man 
who  knew  well  what  English  life  was,  especially  among 


262  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  poorer  classes,  and  earnestly  tried  to  make  it  better 
by  picturing  its  evils;  and  his  tender  heart  and  the  won- 
derful power  of  his  fancy  made  him  one  of  the  great 
English  story-tellers. 

Equally  great  as  a  master  of  tears  and  gentle  laughter 
was  William  Makepeace  Thackeray,  who,  though  less 
widely  popular  than  Dickens,  was,  and  is,  on  the  whole, 
a  greater  favourite  with  readers  of  more  social  expe- 
rience. Of  gentler  birth,  breeding,  and  education, 
Thackeray  began  his  career  by  dabbling  both  in  art  and 
in  letters;  and  it  was  only  in  1848,  when  Vanity  Fair 
appeared,  that  the  public  realised  that  a  new  and  great 
interpreter  of  life  had  arisen.  Vanity  Fair  was  followed 
by  Pendennis  (1850),  Esmond  (1852),  The  Newcomes 
(1855),  and  The  Virginians  (1859),  as  well  as  by  two 
volumes  of  lectures,  English  Humourists  (1853)  and 
The  Four  Georges  (i860).  A  just  idea  of  Thackeray's 
merits  can  be  obtained  by  contrasting  his  work  with 
that  of  Dickens.  (i)  In  the  field  of  the  creative 
imagination  they  are  both  great,  but  Thackeray's  char- 
acters belong  largely  to  the  so-called  upper  classes. 
(2)  Thackeray's  characters,  like  those  of  Fielding, 
impress  one  less  as  odd  than  as  real,  less  as  what 
we  could  fancy  ourselves  as  being  than  as  what  we 
are.  (3)  Thackeray  does  not  so  much  tell  a  rapid 
and  exciting  tale  as  follow  a  curious  form  of  confidential 
address,  as  if  he  were  actually  speaking  directly  to  the 
reader.  His  style  and  his  matter  are  full  of  the  personal 
qualities  of  a  man  who,  by  sympathy  and  experience. 


iJt         PR0S£   literature   from    1832  TO    1 88 1         263 

knew  the  life  of  the  social  world,  and  presented  his 
views,  without  exaggeration,  in  the  careless  but  modu- 
lated voice  of  a  gentleman  in  conversation.  The  absence 
of  melodrama  in  his  writings,  and  his  habit  of  gently 
railing  at  cant  and  hypocrisy  in  all  its  forms,  have  some- 
times brought  on  him  the  reproach  of  cynicism;  but  it 
is  now  more  apparent  that  his  zeal  was  always  for  truth 
and  honour.  He  felt  stirring  in  his  own  heart  the  im- 
pulses that  led  now  to  virtue,  now  to  vice,  and  was  too 
candid  to  represent  life  as  other  than  it  was;  too  full  of 
sympathy  with  all  his  brother-men  to  represent  them 
otherwise  than  as  compounded  of  the  clay  of  which  we 
all  are  fashioned.  His  Henry  Esmond  is  generally 
agreed  to  be,  of  all  historical  novels  in  English,  that 
which  most  faithfully  reproduces  the  life  of  a  vanished 
epoch,  and  may  profitably  be  contrasted,  in  its  methods, 
with  Dickens'  Tale  of  Two  Cities. 

Marian  Evans,  who  wrote  under  the  name  of  George 
Eliot,  was  a  country  girl  of  great  power  of  mind  and 
much  learning,  who  reached  middle  life  before  she 
realised  that  she  had  a  natural  talent  for  the  creation  of 
character  and  the  telling  of  tales.  In  her  first  stories 
and  novels,  —  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  (1858),  Adam  Bede 
(1859),  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  (i860),  Silas  Marner 
(1861), — she  revealed  her  talent,  and  displayed  also, 
in  dealing  with  simple  and  earnest  characters  and  with 
country  life,  much  power  of  humour,  of  pathos,  and 
even  of  tragedy,  and  especially  a  deep  feeling  for  moral 
problems.     In  her  later  works,  — Romola  (1863),  F^Hx 


264  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

Holt  {1^66),  Middlemarch  (1872),  and  Daniel  Deronda 
(1876), — she  threw  an  increasingly  greater  stress  on 
ethical  problems,  so  that  her  novels  became  really  studies 
in  the  portrayal  of  the  conscience  and  moral  develop- 
ment or  retrogression  of  men  and  women.  Those  who 
like  best  novels  dealing  with  the  lighter  sides  of  life,  or 
those  in  which  the  ethical  purpose  is  less  explicit,  have 
thought  her  later  work  inferior  to  her  earlier;  but  the 
English  public  has  always  gladly  read  literature  in  which 
such  purposes  were  prominent,  and  George  Eliot's  hold 
on  the  people  at  large  has  not  been  greatly  weakened  on 
this  account.  Less  famous  than  Scott,  Dickens,  and 
Thackeray,  she  retains  an  honoured  place  in  English 
literature  by  right  of  her  power  as  a  story-teller  and  a 
V  creator  of  character,  and  of  her  success  in  dealing  with 
the  moral  and  religious  elements  in  life. 

Our  century  has  been  rich  in  minor  novelists,  each 
with  a  special  claim  to  recognition.  Mrs.  Gaskell  is 
best  known  by  her  Cranford  (1853),  a  story  of  village 
life  which  reveals  both  sympathy  and  close  observation, 
and  which  has  become  a  classic.  Anthony  Trollope 
wrote  more  than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  and  though 
his  quiet  but  pleasing  novels  of  life  in  the  country  and 
in  the  cathedral  towns,  of  which  Barchester  Towers 
(1857)  is  a  good  example,  never  reached  the  first  rank, 
they  were  almost  uniform  in  excellence,  and  won,  to  no 
small  degree,  the  favour  of  the  public.  Charles  Reade 
wrote  with  more  vivacity.  His  was  a  manly  spirit,  hating 
fraud  and  useless  convention;  and  his  novels,  of  which 


IX         PROSE  LITERATURE  FROM   1832  TO   i88l        265 

Put  Yourself  in  his  Place  (1870)  is  typical,  strike  at  the 
false  and  commend  the  true  in  modern  civilisation. 
He  was  also  the  author  of  a  good  historical  novel, 
The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth  (i860).  Charles  Kingsley 
was  a  clergyman  and  a  reformer,  and  his  novels,  like 
himself,  were  overflowing  with  physical  energy  and 
moral  earnestness.  He  is  best  known  by  a  charming  tale 
for  children.  The  Water  Babies  (1863),  and  by  two  his- 
torical novels,  Hypatia{i2)^^)  and  Westward  Ho  /  (1855). 
Greater  than  any  of  these  writers  is  George  Meredith, 
whose  Richard  Feverel  (1859),  Beauchamf  s  Career 
(1875),  and  Diana  of  the  Crossways  (1885)  have  been 
recognised  by  acute  readers  as  showing  a  rare  power  of 
analysing  the  more  subtle  sides  of  human  nature,  and  a 
rare  power  of  portraying  characters  of  great  charm  and 
nobility.  Unfortunately,  a  somewhat  whimsical  style 
and  method  of  narration  has  kept  him  from  being  as 
widely  read  as  Dickens  and  Thackeray,  to  whose  class 
he  belongs  by  the  type  and  scope  of  his  genius. 

The  last  third  of  the  century  has  seen,  in  Europe,  the 
rise  of  the  realistic  school  of  fiction,  which  endeavours 
to  give  an  accurate  picture  of  life  as  it  actually  appears 
to  the  observer,  but  which,  on  the  continent,  has  shown 
a  tendency  to  take  for  its  subject-matter,  in  many  in- 
stances, vice  and  crime  and  the  ignoble  side  of  man's 
character.  English  fiction,  throughout  the  century,  has, 
on  the  whole,  preferred  to  follow  a  less  scientific  and 
more  purely  fanciful  or  idealistic  method,  though  from 
Jane  Austen  down  a  strong  undercurrent  of   realism 


266  ENGLISH  LITERATURE  CHAP. 

has,  from  time  to  time,  made  itself  manifest;  the  ten- 
dency to  treat  dispassionately  of  crime  and  vice  has 
been  wholly  absent.  While  standing  somewhat  aloof,  in 
this  respect,  from  the  realistic  movement,  English  fic- 
tion has,  in  the  last  two  decades  of  the  century,  revived 
the  novel  of  romantic  adventure,  returning  to  the  field 
opened  by  Scott;  and  the  public,  perhaps  a  little  weary 
of  novels  of  society,  reform,  and  ethics,  has  welcomed 
the  change.  Of  the  new  writers  of  tales  of  adventure  by 
sea  and  land  the  chief  was  Robert  Louis  Stevenson, 
who,  while  himself  fighting  bravely  against  disease, 
delighted  young  and  old  by  his  New  Arabian  Nights 
(1882),  Treasure  Island  (1883),  a  tale  of  pirates,  and 
by  Kidnapped  (1886)  and  The  Master  of  Ballantrae 
(1889),  in  which  the  elements  of  adventure  and  of  char- 
acter are  cunningly  combined. 

The  nineteenth  century  has  done  its  work  in  present- 
ing us  with  almost  all  the  possible  ways  of  treating  human 
life  in  fiction.  The  twentieth  century  must  follow  the 
general  methods  of  the  nineteenth,  combining  and  ex- 
tending them,  as  our  century  has  done  with  the  methods 
of  Fielding,  Richardson,  and  Smollett.  A  very  great 
number  of  novels  is  published  each  year,  but  it  is  plain 
that,  though  many  writers  are  skilled  in  this  form  of 
composition,  few  or  none  give  promise  of  becoming 
masters.  It  is  plain,  too,  that  the  hold  of  the  short  story 
is  growing  stronger.  What  the  nineteenth  century  has 
taught  us  is  sympathy.  We  have  learned  to  feel,  through 
the  art  of  the  narrator,  what  men  and  women  are  doing 


IX  PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1832   TO    1881         26; 

and  suffering  throughout  the  world;  and  we  give  our 
sympathy  both  to  the  more  complex  group  of  characters 
and  more  intricate  series  of  events  portrayed  in  the  novel 
and  to  those  indicated  in  the  less  detailed,  more  rapid 
and  suggestive  short  story,  the  very  movement  and  brevity 
of  which  seem  so  highly  typical  of  modern  life  and 
emotion. 

164.  History. — We  now  turn  to  other  branches  of 
prose-writing,  in  which,  not  through  fictions,  but  by  the 
clear  and  impressive  statement  of  what  they  believed  to 
be  facts  and  principles,  men  have  won  honour  and  influ- 
ence over  their  fellows. 

The  essays  and  history  of  Thomas  Babington  Macaulay 
have  been  almost  as  widely  read  as  the  novels  of  Scott 
and  Dickens.  He  had  been  a  precocious  boy,  with  a 
prodigious  memory,  great  industry,  and  a  genius  for  the 
accumulation  and  organisation  of  facts;  and  he  was  but 
a  young  man  when,  in  1825,  he  astonished  the  public 
by  a  remarkable  essay  on  Milton,  in  which  he  sketched 
rapidly,  but  brilliantly,  the  life,  works,  and  times  of 
the  Puritan  poet.  From  his  first  essay  to  his  last, 
Macaulay' s  skill,  vivacity,  and  information  never 
flagged,  and  he  became  the  people's  great  painter  of 
historical  scenes  and  historical  characters,  excelling 
in  his  power  of  visualising  the  events  and  the  per- 
sonages of  the  past.  This  power  was  even  more 
clearly  shown  in  the  uncompleted  History  of  England 
from  the  Accession  of  James  II.  (1848-60).  Mac- 
aulay wrote  at  a  time  when  the  reading  public   was 


268  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

rapidly  increasing,  when  knowledge  of  history  was  like- 
wise growing,  and  when,  partly  led  on  by  Scott,  men 
were  eager  to  understand  and  realise  for  themselves  the 
character  and  meaning  of  past  events.  That  Macaulay 
was  able  to  satisfy  this  longing  was  due  not  only  to 
his  power  of  imagination,  but  to  his  clear,  rapid, 
and  entertaining  style,  which  had  a  strong  influence 
on  journalism  and  letters.  Macaulay's  mind  was  down- 
right and  positive.  His  information  was  often  insuf- 
ficient, his  judgment  hasty,  his  attitude  prejudiced;  but 
his  clear  and  brilliant  intellect  and  his  clear  and  brill- 
iant style  made  him,  of  all  the  writers  of  the  century, 
the  greatest  populariser  of  history. 

Thomas  Carlyle  was  a  man  of  a  wholly  different  sort. 
He  had  known  poverty,  physical  pain,  and  mental  suffer- 
ing. He  was  irritable,  morose,  inclined  to  believe  that 
most  men  were  fools,  and  that  what  truth  and  nobility 
there  was  in  the  world  was  disguised  and  concealed  by 
the  wrappings  of  hypocrisy,  cant,  and  affectation.  His 
first  important  work.  Sartor  Resartus  {\Z2,^,  a  "philoso- 
phy of  clothes,"  expresses  in  a  grotesque  form  this  pes- 
simistic feeling  and  his  resolve  to  find  and  hold  fast  to 
the  truth  in  a  world  of  shams.  It  was  this  resolve 
that  led  him  to  the  field  of  history.  In  The  French 
Revolution  (1837),  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship  (1841), 
Cromweir s  Letters  and  Speeches  (1845),  and  History 
of  Frederick  II  (1858-65),  he  expounded  with  great 
energy  and  vividness  the  idea  that  the  truly  great 
men,    the   heroes,    are   those  who  battle    against   the 


IX         PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1832   TO    1 88 1         269 

folly  and  vice  of  the  multitudes,  and  that  it  is  they 
who  should  be  admired  and  followed  as  prophets 
and  teachers.  Carlyle's  style  is  broken  and  grotesque, 
but  at  times  full  of  grandeur.  His  great  power  over 
men  lay  in  his  genius  for  worshipping  the  noble  and 
energetic  and  steadfast  in  warrior-characters;  in  a  skill 
not  wholly  unlike  Macaulay's  in  visualising  their  acts 
and  their  surroundings;  and  in  a  power  transcending 
Macaulay's  for  analysing  and  appreciating  the  motives 
that  sway  men.  Carlyle  also  exerted  a  strong  influence 
on  the  thought  and  literature  of  the  century  by  introduc- 
ing into  England  a  knowledge  of  German  philosophy 
and  letters,  which  were  at  that  time  of  a  particularly 
stimulating  character. 

Comparable  with  Macaulay  and  Carlyle  in  the  power 
of  imaginative  visualisation  of  the  past  was  James  An- 
thony Froude,  whose  History  of  Etigland from  the  Fall 
of  Wolsey  to  the  Defeat  of  the  Armada  (1856-69)  charmed 
all  by  its  brilliant  and  rapid  style,  its  grasp  alike  of 
character  and  of  political  history,  and  its  note  of  patri- 
otic devotion.  With  all  this,  Froude  was  peculiarly 
prone  to  errors  of  fact  and  of  judgment. 

Throughout  the  century  there  have  been  many  histori- 
ans of  note,  but,  with  the  possible  exception  of  John 
Richard  Green,  whose  Short  History  of  the  English 
People  (1874)  combined  a  picturesque  and  sympathetic 
style  with  painstaking  accuracy  and  sound  scholarship, 
they  wrote  for  the  learned  public,  and  have  been  little 
known  or  appreciated  by  the  general  public.     Among 


270  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

these  are  the  two  historians  of  Greece,  George  Grote 
and  Bishop  Thirlwall;  Dean  Milman,  the  historian  of 
Latin  Christianity;  and  Charles  Merivale,  the  historian 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  To  these  names,  which  show  how 
English  interest  clung  to  the  history  of  classical  and 
early  Christian  times,  should  be  added  those  of  Henry 
Thomas  Buckle,  author  of  a  stimulating  but  incom- 
plete History  of  Civilisation  in  Europe  (1857-61),  and 
Edward  Augustus  Freeman,  whose  elaborate  History 
of  the  Norman  Conquest  (1867-76)  was  perhaps  the 
most  painstakingly  accurate  English  historical  work  of 
the  century. 

165.  Criticism.  — We  now  turn  to  a  group  of  writers 
who  were  scarcely  less  important  than  Macaulay  and 
Carlyle,  in  that  they  helped  to  improve  the  taste  of  the 
public  and  to  stimulate,  to  a  considerable  degree,  inter- 
est in  art  and  letters.  Chief  among  these  was  John 
RusKiN,  whose  enthusiasm  for  nature  and  art  and  con- 
stant appeal  to  the  emotions  rather  than  to  the  intellect 
mark  his  kinship  with  the  poets  and  novelists  of  the 
romantic  school.  In  his  two  longer  works.  Modern 
Painters  (1843-60)  and  Stones  of  Venice  (1851-53),  as 
well  as  in  many  minor  writings,  he  called  forcibly  to 
the  attention  of  his  countrymen  —  at  a  time  when  the 
tendency  was  to  conventionalise  art  and  to  make  social 
economics  a  matter  of  abstract  calculation  —  the  minute 
beauties  of  nature,  especially  in  clouds  and  mountains, 
the  charm  and  inner  meaning  of  mediaeval  and  Renais- 
sance art,  and  the  forgotten  truths  that  even  humble  call- 


IX  PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1832   TO    l88l         27I 

ings  have  a  dignity  of  their  own  when  rightly  followed, 
and  that  happiness  is  not  to  be  measured  by  rank  nor 
value  and  worth  by  gold  alone.  Full  of  prejudices,  an 
implacable  foe  to  modern  industrial  progress,  often 
lacking  in  accurate  knowledge  of  the  matters  he  treated, 
and  prone  to  make  laws  of  art  by  generalisation  from 
his  personal  fancies,  he  was,  in  spite  of  all  this,  a  power- 
ful influence  in  breaking  down  foolish  conventions  and 
in  opening  the  eyes  of  many  to  the  beauty  of  the  art  of 
the  past  and  to  the  glory  and  shame  of  contemporary 
civilisation.  His  style  is  among  the  most  beautiful 
in  English  literature,  —  rich  and  sonorous,  with  a  lyric 
swing  and  cadence. 

Matthew  Arnold  performed  a  service  for  literature 
somewhat  similar  to  that  which  Ruskin  performed  for 
art,  though  he  appealed  less  to  the  emotions  of  his 
readers  and  more  to  their  critical  faculties.  He  wrote 
much  on  questions  of  Church  and  State,  and  much  in 
analysis  of  existing  social  conditions,  frequently  in  a 
tone  half-bantering,  half-serious.  His  more  permanent 
work  is  contained  in  his  two  series  of  Essays  in  Criti- 
cism (1865,  1888),  in  which  he  tried  to  make  clear  that 
scholars  and  thoughtful  people  generally  throughout  all 
Europe  were  attacking  the  problems  of  literature,  phi- 
losophy, science,  and  kindred  subjects  in  much  the  same 
orderly  way,  and  in  accordance  with  much  the  same 
fundamental  beliefs  and  principles.  He  illustrated  this 
conception  by  a  critical  estimate  of  several  famous 
?iuthors,  in  essays  which  have  themselves  become  famous, 


2/2  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

and  did  a  great  deal  to  convince  the  public  that  judg- 
ments as  to  the  kind  or  value  of  literary  productions  are 
not  matters  of  whim  or  fancy,  but  may  be  profitably  dis- 
cussed on  the  basis  of  aesthetic  and  ethical  principles. 
Arnold's  style  was  calm  and  resolute,  and  owed  much 
of  its  effectiveness  to  his  curious  habit  of  repeating  at 
intervals  a  phrase  or  catchword,  such  as  "  sweetness  and 
light,"  which  recalled  forcibly  his  main  tenet.  Arnold 
was  dogmatic  in  his  opinions,  but  he  always  explained 
his  reasons  for  holding  them;  and  one  who  disagreed 
with  his  results  could  determine  how  and  why  the  dis- 
agreement came  about.  He  thus  acted  as  a  clarifier  of 
thought  in  every  field  which  he  touched. 

Ruskin  and  Arnold,  with  Carlyle,  were  the  great 
influences  on  criticism  in  this  period,  but  two  minor 
critics  of  literature  deserve  mention,  Walter  Bagehot 
and  Walter  Pater.  Bagehot  was  a  banker,  and  ren- 
dered criticism  and  literature  itself  an  important  service 
by  neglecting  the  implicit  convention  of  men  of  letters 
that  criticism  belonged  to  them  alone,  and,  without  pre- 
tence at  an  elaborate  style  or  method,  by  showing  what 
judgment  an  acute  man  of  affairs  had  to  pass  on  books 
and  authors.  It  thus  became  clear  —  and  it  is  each  year 
growing  clearer  —  that  literature  is  written  for  all,  and 
may  be  fairly  judged  by  all  who  read  with  open  eyes  and 
an  open  heart.  Pater  rendered  criticism  an  equally 
great  service  by  the  extraordinary  subtlety  and  skill  of 
his  analysis  of  all  aesthetic  pleasures.  Practically  with- 
out a  profession,  he  lived  a  life  of  leisure  and  seclusion^ 


IX  PROSE    LITERATURE    FROM    1832    TO    1881  2/3 

devoting  himself  entirely  to  the  quest  of  the  beautiful 
and  the  delicate  analysis  of  all  its  effects.  He  be- 
lieved that  each  art,  and  each  work  of  any  of  the 
arts,  has  its  own  peculiar  note,  as  it  were,  of  beauty, 
and  can  be  best  enjoyed  when  that  note  is  discov- 
ered and  appreciated.  This  stimulating  conception 
was  developed  in  Studies  in  the  Renaissance  (1873) 
and  Appreciations  (1889).  He  was  also  the  author  of 
Marius  the  Epicurean  (1885),  an  historical  novel,  in 
which  the  philosophic,  religious,  and  literary  thought 
of  the  second  century  was  analysed  in  accordance  with 
the  same  principle. 

166.  Theology,  Philosophy,  and  Science.  —  England 
has  been  lacking  in  great  theologians  and  philosophers 
during  this  period.  In  religious  literature  the  strongest 
influence  was  that  of  John  Henry  Newman;  in  philoso- 
phy, that  of  John  Stuart  Mill.  The  circumstances  of 
Cardinal  Newman's  career,  no  less  than  his  high  abili- 
ties, made  him  the  most  distinguished  representative  in 
English-speaking  countries  of  an  historic  church;  and 
his  voice,  in  the  minds  of  many,  came  to  stand  for  all 
the  processes  of  thought  and  feeling  involved  in  Chris- 
tianity as  an  ancient  organised  body  of  belief  and  tra- 
dition. His  style,  too,  was  resonant  and  powerful,  yet 
subtle,  and  based  on  Roman  models;  and  its  exquisite 
purity  and  dignity  gain  by  contrast  with  the  emotional 
whimsicalities  of  Carlyle,  and  even  of  Ruskin.  His 
many  volumes  of  sermons,  his  Idea  of  a  University 
(1854),   his  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua  (1864),  and  other 


274  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

works  of  greater  or  less  importance,  had  a  strong 
influence  on  thoughtful  men,  who  found  in  them 
an  almost  perfect  expression  of  noble  and  spiritual 
thoughts. 

Mill  was  eminent  in  metaphysics;  but  it  is  character- 
istic of  him  and  his  race  that  he  devoted  his  attention, 
with  scarcely  less  persistence  and  success,  to  questions 
of  ethics,  economics,  and  public  welfare,  as  in  his  essays 
on  Liberty  (1859)  and  on  The  Subjection  of  Women 
(1869),  the  latter  a  plea  for  the  emancipation  of  women. 
A  similar  devotion  to  public  welfare  was  prominent 
in  the  English  scientific  work  of  the  last  part  of  the 
century. 

England's  greatest  contribution  to  science  during  the 
century  was  the  fertile  thought  conceived  at  practically 
the  same  period  by  Alfred  Russel  Wallace  and 
Charles  Darwin,  and  first  formulated  by  Darwin  in  his 
On  the  Origin  of  Species  (1859),  and  later  works,  that 
the  whole  development  of  life  on  the  planet  was  due  to 
the  modification  of  heredity  by  the  law  of  natural  selec- 
tion. This  gave  impulse  to  a  great  movement  of  research, 
carried  on  by  groups  of  scholars  throughout  the  civilised 
world,  which  has  resulted  in  an  almost  complete  change 
in  the  conception  of  man's  relation  to  the  universe,  and 
which  has  stimulated,  if  not  transformed,  history  and 
psychology  and  all  cognate  branches  of  thought.  Most 
of  these  scholars  have  written  for  the  learned  public 
alone,  but  we  must  mention  several  who  have  served 
truth  and  their  country  well  by  popularising,  to  some 


EX         PROSE   LITERATURE   FROM    1832   TO    1881         2/5 

degree,  the  results  of  research,  —  John  Tyndall,  a  great 
physicist;  Thomas  Huxley,  who  did  much  to  make 
clear  the  meaning  of  evolution  and  its  bearing  on  ethics 
and  religion;  and  Herbert  Spencer,  the  formulator  of 
a  system  of  philosophy  based  on  the  principle  of 
evolution. 


2y6  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 


CHAPTER  X 

POETRY  FROM  THE   DEATH    OF    SCOTT   TO   THE    DEATHS    OF 
TENNYSON  AND   BROWI«NG    (1832-1892) 

167.  Alfred  Tennyson.  —  In  treating  the  poetry  of  the 
period  it  is  necessary  only  to  expand  the  sketch  given 
in  pages  243-49.  Alfred  Tennyson  was,  in  many  re- 
spects, the  most  remarkable  author  of  the  century  in 
England.  From  early  manhood  to  extreme  old  age  he 
put  his  verse  before  the  public,  which  at  first,  following 
the  critics,  read  him  grudgingly  and  then  with  increas- 
ing approbation,  until,  from  In  Memoriam  (1850)  to 
the  Death  of  CEnone  (1892),  he  reached  the  hearts  of 
the  English-speaking  race  as  no  man  had  before  him. 
That  he  was  appreciated  so  widely  was  partly  due  to  the 
influences  (pages  250-55)  that  had  created  a  vast  reading 
public,  and  had  put  all  parts  of  it,  realising  their  com- 
mon humanity,  into  sympathy  with  one  another;  but  it 
is  also  due  to  the  genius  of  the  singer.  His  themes  were 
such  as  had  long  filled  the  hearts  of  all,  but  had  hitherto 
received  no  adequate  expression.  He  sang  of  patriot- 
ism, of  passionate  regret  for  the  beloved  dead,  of  hope 
and  faith  in  God  and  man  and  heaven,  of  constancy  in 


X  POETRY   FROM    1832  TO    1892  277 

love,  of  noble  ideals  of  purity  and  honour,  of  all  the 
struggles  that  lead  us  higher.  He  was  master  of  every 
form  of  lyric  and  narrative  verse,  combining  the  melody 
of  Coleridge,  the  colour  of  Keats,  the  story-telling  power 
of  Scott,  the  ethical  impulse  of  Wordsworth.  Living 
aloof  from  the  crowd,  he  was  independent  of  political 
or  religious  creeds,  or  social  coteries,  and  was  thus  in 
his  seclusion  a  poet  of  pure  contemplation,  free  to 
reflect  in  his  poems  the  currents  of  thought  and  feeling 
in  his  day,  without  giving  them  a  partisan  form.  He 
pleased  all  classes  of  the  public :  the  acutely  literary  by 
the  exquisite  finish  of  his  form,  no  less  than  by  qualities 
that  appealed  to  the  people  at  large  —  the  melody  of  his 
song  and  the  sweep  of  his  blank  verse.  He  became 
poet-laureate  in  1850  by  royal  command,  but  he  was 
none  the  less  so  by  national  acclamation. 

168.  Robert  Browning  was  almost  the  exact  contem- 
porary of  Tennyson,  and  throughout  a  long  life  devoted 
himself  to  poetry  with  equal  earnestness.  A  man  of 
genius,  with  great  stores  of  information,  a  mind  of  ex- 
traordinary acuteness,  and  a  creative  imagination  of  the 
first  rank,  he  had  not  the  qualities  that  allowed  him  to 
appeal  strongly  to  the  great  public,  which  was  bewildered 
by  his  Sordello  (1840).  It  was  not  until  the  appearance 
of  Men  and  Women  (1855)  that  he  acquired  a  staunch 
following  of  ardent  admirers,  and  not  until  the  publica- 
tion of  The  Ring  and  the  Book  (1868)  that  he  was  gen- 
erally recognized  as  a  great  poet.  He  never  became  a 
national  favourite,  as  did  Tennyson,  but  he  appealed 


27S  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

with  great  force  to  all  who  loved  analysis  of  character. 
What  stood  in  the  way  of  Browning's  popularity  was,  in 
part,  his  intricate  manner  of  expression,  but  mainly  the 
fact  that,  in  the  field  of  dramatic  monologue,  which  he 
made  his  own,  his  purpose  was  to  reveal  the  individu- 
ality by  reproducing  minute  processes  of  thought.  His 
hold  on  his  admirers,  now  rapidly  growing  in  numbers, 
is  due  partly  to  the  rare  melody  of  his  verse  in  certain 
poems  or  isolated  passages,  but  mainly  to  the  mighty 
band  of  dramatis  persona,  of  all  times  and  nations,  but 
chiefly,  perhaps,  of  mediseval  Italy,  which  he  created, 
—  a  band  equalled  only  by  that  of  Shakespeare,  —  and 
whose  inner  thoughts  he  analysed  with  marvellous  reality. 
He  thus  satisfied  to  the  full,  in  the  more  acute  class  of 
readers,  the  passion  which  has  been  one  of  the  great 
strains  of  modern  thought,  —  the  passion  for  reproduc- 
tions in  art  of  the  life  of  typical  men  and  women  of  the 
past. 

169.  Other  Poets. — Our  century,  so  rich  in  great 
poets,  was  also  rich  in  poets  less  great.  Elizabeth 
Barrett  Browning,  the  wife  of  Robert  Browning,  was 
another  of  the  remarkable  group  of  women  who  have 
been  an  essential  element  in  the  literature  of  this  period, 
adding  to  it  qualities  which,  in  kind  or  in  degree,  are 
peculiarly  feminine.  Mrs.  Browning  had  the  woman's 
heart  of  spontaneous  and  undisciplined  feeling,  —  over- 
flowing with  pity  and  indignation,  as  in  her  humani- 
tarian protests  for  the  oppressed;  or  with  pure  affection, 
as  in  her  beautiful  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  (1850). 


X  POETRY   FROM    1 832   TO    1892  2/9 

Mention,  too,  must  be  made  of  Macaulay's  Lays  of 
Ancient  Rome  (1842).  His  verses  were  mechanical,  but 
they  had  a  swing  and  force  that  made  them  favourites 
with  many,  particularly  the  young.  Matthew  Arnold 
and  Arthur  Hugh  Clough  (who  were  both  affected 
deeply  by  the  thought  of  their  time,  and  remain, 
to  a  great  extent,  poets  for  scholars,  rather  than  for 
the  people);  Charles  Kingsley's  fine  ballads  and 
Andromeda  (1858),  his  experiment  in  hexameter ;  and 
Edward  Fitzgerald's  remarkable  translation  of  Omar 
Khayyam  (1858),  have  already  been  mentioned  (pages 
247-48).  Two  strains  in  our  modern  poetry  remain  to 
be  spoken  of.  The  first  is  that  of  the  writers  of  vers  de 
societe  and  of  other  forms  of  light  and  charming  verse, 

—  Winthrop  Mackworth  Praed,  Charles  Stuart  Cal- 
verley,  Frederick  Locker- Lampson,  Austin  Dobson, 

—  whose  graceful  art  and  whose  influence  in  widening 
the  scope  of  English  poetry  by  introducing  the  ballade 
and  other  foreign  forms  of  verse  it  would  be  churlish 
not  to  recognise  and  appreciate.  The  second  is  that  of 
the  poets  sometimes  called  pre-Raphaelites,  —  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti,  Christina  Rossetti,  William  Morris, 
and  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  (page  249).  Rossetti 
was  a  painter  of  much  skill  and  beauty,  and  Morris  had, 
in  several  of  the  arts,  and  particularly  in  the  handicrafts, 
a  strong  influence  in  bringing  about  a  better  condition 
of  the  public  taste  in  household  decoration.  As  artists 
and  as  poets  the  whole  group  turned  for  inspiration  to  the 
art  and  poetry  of  the  Middle  Ages,  before  Raphael  set 


280  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAF. 

the  seal  of  academic  convention  on  the  young  Renais. 
sance,  when  each  man  in  his  own  art  created,  with  com- 
plete naivete,  what  seemed  beautiful  in  his  own  eyes. 
An  Italian  by  blood  and  temperament,  Rossetti's  trend 
was  towards  the  Italian  poetry  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
and  especially  its  worship  of  beauty  and  its  expression 
in  the  sonnet  of  the  ecstasy  of  contemplative  love. 
Morris  loved  to  retell  tales  of  mediaeval  and  ancient 
romance,  in  The  Earthly  Paradise  (1868-70),  Sigurd  the 
Volsung  (1876),  and  his  translations  of  the  ^neid  (1876) 
and  the  Odyssey  (1887).  Swinburne  turned  to  many 
sources,  —  to  the  Middle  Ages,  to  the  Elizabethans,  to 
the  Greeks, —  for  his  inspiration,  and,  in  his  Atalanta  in 
Calydon  (1864)  and  Poems  and  Ballads  (1866),  thrilled 
men  by  a  richness  of  rhythm  and  a  harmony  of  sound 
which  were  new  to  English  verse,  and  which  have  given 
him  a  strong  influence  over  younger  writers.  But  all 
these  poets  lived  apart  from  the  people,  dazed  by  their 
own  worship  of  vanished  ideals,  and  out  of  sympathy 
with  modern  life.  Their  school  ceases  with  their  own 
voices,  and  the  elements  they  contributed  to  English 
verse  are  absorbed,  like  so  many  others,  in  the  great 
current  of  English  poetry. 


XI  PROSE   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES  28 1 


CHAPTER  XI 

PROSE  UTERATURE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES 

1 70.  The  Growth  of  a  New  Nation.  —  Settlements  in 
the  territory  that  now  constitutes  the  United  States  were 
begun  very  early  in  the  seventeenth  century ;  but  it  was 
not  until  well  within  the  present  century  that  the  inhabi- 
tants of  this  land  have  come  to  consider  themselves  wholly 
as  brothers.  Nothing  could  have  exceeded  in  diversity 
the  elements  that  entered  into  the  process  of  amalgama- 
tion. Along  the  Atlantic  and  Gulf  coasts  there  were  Eng- 
Ush,  Dutch,  German,  Swedish,  French,  Spanish,  Scotch, 
and  Irish  colonists ;  and  after  the  struggle  for  indepen- 
dence was  over,  and  especially  after  the  opportunities 
existing  in  the  new  world  became  generally  known,  there 
have  flocked  to  us,  through  every  open  gate,  emigrants 
of  all  races  and  from  all  countries,  but  particularly  from 
lands  where  severe  governmental  rule  or  harsh  economic 
conditions  have  driven  out  the  oppressed,  the  poor,  or 
the  ambitious.  Diverse  as  were  these  elements,  how- 
ever, the  process  of  unification  has  gone  steadily  on.  By 
far  the  majority  of  the  early  settlers  were  English,  and,  the 
original  colonies  belonging  to  the  English  crown  or  soon 


282  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

falling  to  it,  the  English  speech  became  the  official  and 
current  language.  But,  though  using  a  single  speech  and 
subject  to  a  single  rule,  it  was  long  before  the  colonies 
reached  uniformity  of  sentiment.  Drawn  together  gradu- 
ally by  common  interests  and  mutual  intercourse,  it  was 
only  late  in  the  eighteenth  century  that  they  timidly 
banded  together  to  secure  those  interests.  Carried  further 
than  they  intended,  they  achieved  independence,  and 
became  technically  a  nation.  But  even  then  a  genuinely 
national  spirit  was,  to  a  large  degree,  impossible.  The 
states  were  full  of  jealousies  and  antipathies,  falling,  like 
the  German  states  of  the  same  period,  into  little  geo- 
graphical groups.  It  was  not  until  at  least  several  decades 
of  the  nineteenth  century  had  passed  that  the  people  of 
^e  United  States  grew  to  realise  fully  that  they  were 
brothers,  and  to  develop,  consciously  and  unconsciously, 
the  policy  and  the  temperament  that  were  to  distinguish 
them  in  many  ways  from  their  kindred  across  the  sea. 
Indeed,  we  may  say  that  it  was  not  until  the  nation  had 
spread  from  one  ocean  to  the  other,  and  until  the  most 
radical  differences  between  parts  of  the  country  had  been 
settled  by  the  great  Civil  War  and  the  mutual  under- 
standing which  slowly  followed  it,  that  the  men  of  our 
land  have  felt  that  they  were  bound  together  by  ties 
which  cannot  be  broken. 

171.  The  Growth  of  a  New  Literature.  —  There  were 
several  causes  which  prevented  the  upgrowing  of  literature 
in  the  United  States  until  the  nation  had,  to  some  extent, 
reached  consciousness  as  a  nation.     First,  the  time  and 


XI  PROSE   IN   THE    UNITED    STATES  283 

Strength  of  the  colonists  were  filled  with  pressing  and 
often  perilous  duties.  At  the  outset  these  were  so  en- 
grossing that  they  took  away  alike  the  desire  to  produce 
literature  and  the  desire  to  receive  it.  The  life  of  con- 
templative leisure,  which  tends  to  foster  literature,  is  still 
rare  among  us,  for  even  when  the  more  arduous  duties  of 
the  pioneer  were  over,  the  impulse  towards  a  hfe  of 
activity  was  strong,  as  it  must  always  be  in  a  young  state, 
and  our  best  minds  turned  from  the  task  of  clearing  a 
continent  to  the  organising  and  upbuilding  of  a  great 
commercial  and  industrial  nation.  Second,  there  were 
peculiar  circumstances  in  the  hfe  of  each  section  of  the 
country  that  acted  as  a  deterring  force.  In  the  southern 
colonies  it  was  the  fact  that  men  lived  mainly  on  planta- 
tions, somewhat  isolated  from  their  fellows,  and  that  the 
influence  of  slavery  tended  to  produce  an  aristocratic  and 
unprogressive  society.  The  middle  colonies  lacked  the 
spur  of  high  ideals,  and  cared  more  for  commerce  than 
for  learning  and  the  arts.  In  New  England,  on  the  other 
hand,  where  life  was  more  strenuous,  the  influence  of 
religion  was  blighting.  Puritans  of  the  Puritans,  straitest 
of  the  sect,  they  regarded  the  works  of  the  imagination 
as  sinful,  and  their  abnormal  self-analysis  and  religious 
narrowness  destroyed  the  element  of  beauty  even  in  the 
literature  of  piety.  Third,  the  ties  that  bound  each 
colony  to  the  mother  country  were  stronger  even  than 
the  ties  that  bound  them  to  one  another,  and  the  litera- 
ture of  England  satisfied  all  their  needs. 

Thus  it  came  about  that  little  writing  of  merit  was  done 


284  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAR 

in  America  until  this  century.  We  have,  of  course,  the 
writings  of  such  of  the  early  explorers  and  settlers  as  were 
most  impressed  by  the  wonders  of  a  virgin  world,  by  their 
novel  adventures,  or  by  a  dim  vision  of  what  civilisation 
on  this  continent  might  become.  But  quaint  as  these 
are,  they  can  scarcely  be  counted  as  the  beginnings  of 
American  literature.  The  succeeding  generations  of 
writers  born  on  the  new  soil,  the  descendants  of  the 
pioneers,  felt  dimly  that  new  thoughts  were  stirring  within 
them ;  but  in  all  matters  of  expression  they  turned  natur- 
ally to  English  models,  —  to  Pope  or  Addison,  —  imitat- 
ing them  consciously  like  unskilled  novices.  This  period 
of  apprenticeship  lasted  until  after  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  broken  only  by  a  few  men,  to  be 
naentioned  later,  who  were  too  intent  on  ideas  of  great 
purport  to  follow  any  model  slavishly.  From  the  time 
of  Irving  on,  however,  we  meet  new  conditions.  The 
reading  public  was  rapidly  increasing,  and  cared  more 
and  more  for  the  work  of  American  authors.  Beginning 
with  Cooper,  Hawthorne,  and  Emerson,  American  writers, 
too,  began  to  look  within  their  own  hearts,  rather  than 
abroad,  both  for  the  matter  of  which  they  wrote,  and  for 
the  manner  in  which  they  wrote.  The  national  move- 
ment thus  begun  has  grown  in  strength  throughout  the 
country.  As  generation  succeeded  generation,  we  have 
thought  less  and  less  of  EngHsh  models  and  tended  more 
and  more  to  the  natural  expression  of  our  own  thoughts. 

172.   National  Elements  in  American  Literature.  —  Our 
literature  is  thus  both  dependent  and  independent,  both 


«  PROSE    IN   THE    UNITED    STATES  285 

a  branch  and  a  tree.  The  colonists  came  in  the  age  of 
Shakespeare  and  Milton,  bringing  with  them  the  glorious 
speech  of  the  period  and  the  staunch  English  temper  of 
mind  and  body.  The  language  still  remains  common  to 
both  nations,  with  only  the  slightest  divergencies,  due 
sometimes  to  the  survival  here  of  words  or  idioms  that 
have  now  passed  out  of  the  British  vocabulary,  some- 
times to  changes  that  have  occurred  in  Great  Britain 
within  the  last  two  centuries,  and  sometimes  to  similar 
changes  in  the  United  States,  —  changes  which  the  di- 
verse elements  in  our  population  and  the  rapidly  shifting 
experiences  of  our  people  have  made  peculiarly  fitting. 
The  racial  traits  of  the  English,  especially  those  most 
firmly  rooted  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  stock,  have  been  pre- 
served in  America ;  but  they  have  suffered  a  sea-change, 
remaining  the  same  and  yet  becoming  different.  Just  as 
it  is  impossible  not  to  distinguish,  as  a  rule,  Americans 
from  Englishmen  by  their  voices,  dress,  demeanor,  habits, 
and  general  theory  of  life,  so  it  is  impossible  as  a  rule  not 
to  find  in  American  and  in  English  literature  of  this  cen- 
tury somewhat  different  characteristics.  To  formulate 
these  national  elements  in  American  literature  is  a  diffi- 
cult task,  but  we  cannot  easily  err  in  pointing  out  three. 

First,  American  literature  is  in  the  main  addressed  to 
the  people  at  large,  rather  than  to  any  set  or  class,  and 
is  characterised  by  plainness  and  simplicity.  It  retains 
much  of  the  savour  of  the  eighteenth  century,  partly 
because  the  social  centres  in  the  United  States  were 
until  recently  compact,  neighbourly  Uttle  places,  quite  hkc 


286  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  London  of  Queen  Anne's  day,  and  partly  because  the 
conditions  of  political  and  social  life  long  tended  to  keep 
the  citizen's  mind  peculiarly  alert,  as  in  the  Uttle  eigh- 
teenth-century London,  to  matters  of  common  interest 
and  welfare.  The  characteristic  American  style  is  thus 
precisely  what  we  should  expect  in  a  democracy :  in 
prose,  the  plain  diction  of  Emerson,  Thoreau,  and  Lin- 
coln; in  poetry,  the  homely,  domestic  verse  of  Long- 
fellow and  Whittier.  Second,  American  literature  is  full 
of  hope  and  resoluteness.  At  the  close  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  the  pioneers  are  still  at  their  task  in  the 
extreme  West  as  their  ancestors  were  in  the  extreme 
East  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth.  The  clearing  of 
a  continent  has  taught  us  self-reliance.  Thrown  early  on 
our  own  resources,  both  as  a  nation  and  as  individuals, 
we  have  held  fast  to  the  belief  that  industry  brings  happi- 
ness, and  from  first  to  last,  from  Franklin  to  Parkman,  it  is 
hard  to  find  in  our  literature  the  notes  of  dread  and  doubt 
and  despair.  Third,  American  literature  has  a  strong 
tinge  of  humour.  This  is,  in  fact,  a  continuation  of  the  old 
mood  of  Steele  and  Swift  and  Defoe,  and  the  England 
that  laughed  with  them  and  was  swayed  by  them,  —  a 
mood  rather  serious  than  merry,  striving  to  recover  a 
manly  balance  of  thought  and  action  by  contemplating 
typical  absurdities  of  foolishness  and  prejudice.  But  it  is 
above  all  the  mood  of  a  democracy,  in  which  the  citizens 
form  together  a  huge  family,  undivided  save  by  the  sim- 
plest artificial  distinctions,  and  in  which,  aware  of  the 
frailty  of  all,  we  are  quick  to  catch  the  ludicrous  aspect 


XI  PROSE    IN   THE   UNITED   STATES  287 

of  life,  its  incongruities  and  surprises,  the  odd  simulari- 
ties  between  things  seemingly  diverge,  the  infinite  and 
whimsical  variations  of  human  nature. 

173.  Prose  before  Irving.  —  It  was  in  New  England, 
where  learning  was  cherished  and  the  life  of  the  spirit 
burned  most  brightly,  that  American  literature  first  found 
voice  in  the  works  of  Cotton  Mather,  who  was  by  blood 
and  training  a  fit  representative  of  the  New  England  hier- 
archy, for  he  came  of  a  family  of  famous  clergymen  and 
was  himself  the  most  learned  and  rigorous  upholder  of 
the  early  principles  of  a  church  state.  He  is  remem- 
bered because  of  his  connection  with  the  Salem  witch- 
craft and  by  two  remarkable  works,  his  Wonders  of  the 
Invisible  World  (1693)  and  his  Magnalia  Christi  Ameri- 
cana (1702),  the  history  of  Christ's  church  in  America. 
The  former  is  full  of  vicious  superstition,  the  latter 
crammed  with  useless  learning,  but  both  are  thoroughly 
typical.  To  Cotton  Mather  the  New  World  was  the 
abode  of  devils,  and  it  was  only  by  fasting  and  prayer, 
by  single-minded  devotion  to  the  letter  of  the  stem  Puri- 
tan creed,  by  obedience  to  the  laws  of  God  and  the  rule 
of  his  ministers  on  earth,  that  the  demon-haunted  wilder- 
ness could  be  turned  into  the  saintly  paradise  for  which 
he  yearned.  The  Magnalia  Christi  Americana  is  a  stout 
folio,  written  in  the  quaint  style  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury divines,  at  a  moment  when  the  almost  absolute 
power  of  the  church  was  weakening.  It  is  memorable 
because  it  stands  as  the  prose  epic  of  the  militant  church 
of  the  first  American  century,  and  because  it  breathes  a 


288  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

spirit  of  noble  patriotism,  not  for  a  country  which  had  as 
yet  no  separate  existence,  but  for  that  high  dream  of  an 
American  theocracy  which  influenced  so  potently  our 
subsequent  fortunes. 

Within  half  a  century  from  the  time  at  which  Mather 
wrote,  gross  superstition  had  vanished  from  New  Eng- 
land, and  the  church,  separated  from  the  state,  had  with- 
drawn to  its  natural  functions.  But  the  flame  of  religious 
feeling  burned  more  fiercely  than  ever.  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards believed  that  men  were  thronging  to  hell,  where 
they  were  to  be  tortured  with  fire  by  the  divine  ven- 
geance, and  his  powerful  sermons,  such  as  Sinners  in  the 
Hands  of  an  Angry  God,  give  an  impressive  expression 
to  this  terrible  conviction.  Edwards  himself  was  a  man 
of  pure  and  exalted  character,  a  Puritan  mystic,  who  de- 
sired a  heaven  of  holiness,  and  who  in  his  youth  spent 
much  time,  as  he  wrote,  "  in  viewing  the  clouds  and  sky, 
to  behold  the  sweet  glory  of  God  in  these  things ;  in  the 
meantime  singing  forth,  with  a  low  voice,  his  contempla- 
tions of  the  Creator  and  Redeemer."  He  was,  never- 
theless, the  most  acute  metaphysician  of  his  day,  and 
influenced  profoundly  both  American  and  British  philo- 
sophical thought  by  his  Modern  Prevailing  Notions  of 
the  Freedom  of  the  Will  (1754),  written 'while  he  was 
living  as  a  missionary  among  the  Stockbridge  Indians. 
In  a  clear,  firm  style  —  as  different  as  possible  from  that 
of  Cotton  Mather  —  he  endeavoured  logically  to  estabhsh 
the  extreme  doctrine  of  foreordination,  —  that  man's 
will  is  never  free,  but  that,  even  while  seemingly  most 


XI  PROSE   IN   THE   UNITED    STATES  289 

unfettered  in  his  choice,  he  is  perforce  walking  in  the 
path  predestined  from  all  eternity. 

From  the  sombre  fanaticism  of  Mather  and  Edwards, 
we  turn  with  delight  to  the  cheery  good  sense  of  Benja- 
min Franklin.  He  was  a  New  Englander  also,  the  son 
of  a  soap-maker,  the  descendant  of  a  long  line  of  North 
England  blacksmiths ;  but,  by  thrift  and  honest  wisdom, 
he  came  to  be  one  of  the  great  founders  of  the  Republic, 
a  distinguished  man  of  science,  and  a  benefactor  of  the 
people  in  innumerable  ways.  He  was  the  incarnation  of 
the  robust  intelligence  and  inventive  and  constructive 
genius  that  accomplished  our  independence,  achieved 
our  commercial  and  industrial  prosperity,  and  has  lain  at 
the  root  of  our  progress  in  literature  and  science.  Be- 
wildered at  finding  so  strikingly  practical  a  figure  in  the 
land  of  Mather  and  Edwards,  critics  have  sometimes 
declared  that  Franklin  was  a  typical  Englishman  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  that  it  is,  as  it  were,  only  by 
accident  that  he  was  born  and  bred  on  this  side  of  the 
water.  But  they  who  speak  thus  misread  the  character 
of  New  England.  Since  the  landing  of  the  Puritans  and 
the  Pilgrims  the  writing  of  books  had  been  the  privilege 
of  the  learned,  and  the  learned  wrote  of  little  else  than 
theology.  We  have  only  to  look  below  the  surface,  how- 
ever, to  see  that  the  common  people  were  throughout 
this  long  period  of  silence  slowly  developing  the  Yankee 
traits  of  mind  and  temper  to  which  Franklin  first  gave 
expression  in  literature. 

Franklin  was  early  familiar  with  Pilgrim^ s  Progress  and 
¥ 


290  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  Spectator,  and  he  began  his  literary  career  by  imita- 
tions of  the  latter.  He  had  caught,  however,  the  essen- 
tial spirit  of  his  models  rather  than  their  form,  and  it 
was  the  plain  speech  of  Bunyan  and  the  ease  of  Addison 
which  showed  themselves  most  clearly  in  his  important 
works.  These  consisted  chiefly  of  short  articles  of  many 
kinds,  by  which  he  sought  with  success  to  influence  pub- 
lic opinion  on  a  variety  of  subjects.  Much  that  he  wrote 
is  still  interesting,  but  his  fame  as  a  man  of  letters  is  due 
mainly  to  his  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  (1732-48)  and 
his  Autobiography.  Each  year  the  humble  little  Almanac 
contained  a  fresh  set  of  Poor  Richard's  pithy  proverbs, 
in  prose  or  verse,  and  each  year  they  were  pored  over, 
not  merely  by  individuals,  but  by  whole  households 
throughout  the  land.  The  Autobiography,  many  times 
issued  in  a  garbled  form,  and  printed  in  full  only  in 
1868,  has  hkewise  been  a  permanent  favourite  with  the 
people,  who  read  with  perennial  delight  the  simple  but 
wise  tale  of  the  steps  by  which  a  humble  Yankee  boy  rose 
to  be  second  only  to  Washington  in  the  esteem  of  his 
contemporaries. 

With  Franklin  in  this  early  period  of  our  literature 
must  be  mentioned  the  group  of  noble  men  who  gave 
their  lives  to  the  founding  of  the  state,  men  who  wrote 
well  because  they  had  high  thoughts  and  were  labouring 
for  great  ideals.  Such  were  George  Washington,  the 
dignity  of  whose  state  papers  are  the  reflection  of  his 
own  character;  Thomas  Jefferson,  who  gave  to  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  (1775)   the  sonorous  elo- 


XI  PROSE   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES  29I 

quence  with  which  it  solemnly  calls  on  God  and  the 
nations  of  the  world  to  witness  America's  proclamation 
of  the  inalienable  rights  of  her  citizens;  Alexander 
Hamilton,  one  of  the  ablest  political  thinkers  of  the 
time  and  principal  author  of  the  remarkable  series  of 
papers  on  the  theory  of  government  that  form  the  Feder- 
alist (1787-88)  ;  and  Thomas  Paine,  who  was  unfor- 
tunately best  known  by  his  violent  deistical  writings,  but 
who  was  the  most  effective  pamphleteer  of  the  Revolution, 
and  by  his  Common  Sense  (1776)  and  The  Crisis  (^it]6- 
83)  gave  important  support  to  the  American  cause. 

1 74.  Irving  and  Cooper.  —  Writing  that  dealt  with 
aught  but  spiritual  truths  or  plain  facts  was  frowned  upon 
in  New  England,  and  American  imaginative  Uterature 
had  its  birth  in  the  more  liberal  Middle  States.  Charles 
Brockden  Brown  of  Philadelphia  is  said  to  have  been 
the  first  man  of  letters  in  America  who  supported  him- 
self by  his  pen.  His  six  novels  belong  to  the  English 
school  contemporary  with  him  and  preceding  Scott. 
He  delighted  in  the  horrors  of  death,  crime,  and  pesti- 
lence. But  it  should  be  noticed  that  Brown  was  the  first 
to  discover  the  richness  of  the  field  open  to  American 
writers  of  fiction,  and  to  substitute,  as  in  Edgar  Huntley 
(1801),  "  the  incidents  of  Indian  hostility  and  the  perils 
of  the  western  wilderness  "  for  the  puerile  terrors  of  Mrs. 
Radcliffe  and  the  Castle  of  Otranto. 

It  was  in  the  fertile  field  of  native  romance  that  Amer- 
ican literature  won  its  earliest  successes,  a  few  years 
later,  in  the  tales  of  Washington  Irving  and  the  novels 


292  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

of  James  Fenimore  Cooper.  Irving  was  by  nature  akin 
to  Addison,  Steele,  and  Goldsmith.  He  loved  their 
kindly,  contemplative,  whimsical  mood,  and  his  work  is 
a  continuation  of  theirs  without  being  in  any  sense  an 
imitation  of  it.  Irving  first  became  known  through  his 
burlesque  chronicle  of  the  Dutch  New  Amsterdam, 
Knickerbocker's  History  of  New  York  (1809),  a  mock- 
heroic  parody  of  a  now  forgotten  volume  of  local  history. 
His  Sketch  Book  (1820),  Bracebridge  ^(2// (182 2),  which 
were  the  first  American  books  read  in  England,  showed, 
at  the  beginning  of  his  career,  the  two  kinds  of  material 
of  which  he  was  master.  In  the  sketches  dealing  with  an 
English  Christmas  he  continued,  so  to  speak,  the  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley  papers,  writing  from  the  point  of 
view,  not  of  the  native  Englishman,  but  of  his  trans- 
Atlantic  cousin ;  in  the  story  of  Rip  Van  Winkle  he  took 
up  the  legends  that  clustered  around  the  river  of  his 
boyhood.  In  the  Tales  of  a  Traveller  (1824),  and  in 
other  volumes,  he  continued  to  treat  these  two  diverse 
subjects,  and  to  them,  led  by  his  long  residence  on  the 
continent  of  Europe  and  especially  in  Spain,  he  added 
the  Spanish  legend.  Irving  thus  revealed  to  Americans 
the  charm  of  the  Old  and  —  what  was  of  even  greater 
service  —  the  charm  of  the  New  World.  His  richest  vein 
was  that  of  the  romantic  tale  tinged  with  humour,  and  it 
is  clear  that  his  temperament,  which  united  a  love  of 
humour  with  a  love  of  romance,  allowed  him  to  combine 
the  best  qualities  of  the  eighteenth  century  essayist  with 
those  of  the  story-tellers  of  his  own  time. 


XI  PROSE    IN   THE   UNITED    STATES  293 

Irving  discovered  for  us  the  picturesque  treasures  of 
native  scenery  and  of  Dutch  colonial  life ;  Cooper,  the 
romance  of  the  virgin  wilderness  and  of  the  American 
revolution.  He  was  not  by  instinct  a  man  of  letters. 
He  had  not  the  breadth  and  urbanity  of  nature  which 
Irving  possessed,  and  he  had  not  Irving's  grace  of  style. 
But  he  had  the  gift  of  story-telling ;  and  he  was  so  for- 
tunate as  to  have  seen,  in  part,  a  side  of  American  life 
that  was  of  permanent  interest  to  the  world,  —  the  titanic 
strife  on  the  westward-moving  borders  between  the  pio- 
neer and  the  Indian.  He  grew  towards  middle  age  with- 
out a  thought  of  authorship,  when  chance  led  him  to 
novel- writing.  The  Spy  (182 1),  dealing  with  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution,  was  followed  by  a  rapid  succession  of 
remarkable  tales  of  adventure  by  land  and  sea.  Of  these 
the  most  famous  are  The  Pilot  (1823),  of  which  John 
Paul  Jones  is  the  hero,  and  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans 
(1826),  the  best  of  the  Leatherstocking  tales.  In  gen- 
eral, it  may  be  said  that  Scott  was  Cooper's  model ;  but 
Scott  merely  pointed  out  the  way.  Each  turned  with 
genuine  delight  to  the  romance  of  his  own  soil.  Scott 
wrote  of  knights  and  pretenders,  of  frays  and  tournaments 
and  dungeons ;  Cooper,  of  trappers  and  braves,  of  wild 
expeditions,  of  the  scalping-knife  and  the  stake.  And 
America  and  Europe  read  —  and  reads  —  the  Waverley 
novels  and  the  Leatherstocking  tales  with  equal  joy. 
Cooper's  novels  of  the  sea  are  scarcely  less  prized,  for 
they  are  the  fruit  of  actual  knowledge  of  nautical  affairs  ; 
but  his  greatest  contribution  to  fiction  lay  in  the  few  great 


294  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

figures  of  pioneer  life,  —  Hawkeye,  Chingachgook,  and 
Uncas,  which  he  created,  and  which  must  stand  in  liter- 
ature as  permanent  types. 

175.  Poe  and  Hawthorne.  —  Edgar  Allan  Poe  and 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne  had  much  in  common.  They 
were  as  unlike  the  energetic  and  resolute  Scott  and 
Cooper  as  were  Keats  and  Shelley,  and,  like  the  latter, 
they  were  supersensitive,  ethereal,  enamoured  of  the  alle- 
gorical and  the  ideal. 

Poe's  physique  conditioned  his  art.  His  intellect  was 
extraordinarily  clear  and  brilliant,  delighting  in  intricate 
problems ;  but  his  nervous  system  was  so  morbidly  excit- 
able that  he  was  a  prey  to  despair  and  gloom,  and  his 
mind  was  preoccupied  by  thoughts  of  death,  the  grave, 
^and  all  that  is  ghastly  and  horrible.  From  this  curious 
conjunction  of  quaUties  came  the  power  of  his  Tales  of 
the  Grotesque  and  Arabesque  (1840)  and  his  other  sto- 
ries. Sometimes,  as  in  The  Gold  Bug,  Poe  applied  his 
marvellous  skill  as  an  analyst  to  a  mere  cryptogram; 
sometimes,  as  in  the  famous  Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue y 
to  tracing  out,  with  the  same  inexorable  logic,  the  perpe- 
trator of  a  crime ;  sometimes,  as  in  Hans  Pfaal,  to  the 
construction  of  a  hoax ;  but  more  often,  as  in  Ligeia,  The 
Masque  of  the  Red  Death,  and  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher,  to  producing  by  degrees  on  the  reader  the  effect 
of  utter  terror,  but  terror  so  refined  by  the  beauty  of  the 
style  as  to  have  become  a  pleasure.  In  this  strange 
power  he  has  never  been  surpassed. 

Hawthorne  was  a  New  Englander  and  came  of  a  typi- 


XI  PROSE   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES  29$ 

cal  family  of  Salem  sea  captains  —  seafarers  from  father 
to  son,  —  the  descendants  of  a  judge  in  the  Salem  witch 
trials.  In  Hawthorne  all  the  inherited  activities  were 
turned  inwards.  Living  for  years  in  extreme  seclusion  in 
the  quiet  little  seaport  of  Salem,  writing  by  day  and  walk- 
ing on  the  beach  by  night,  he  brooded  over  the  shapes 
his  fancy  fashioned,  and  particularly  over  the  figures  from 
the  Puritan  past  that  had  trodden  less  than  two  centuries 
before  where  his  feet  then  trod.  His  Twice-Told  Tales 
(1837,  1842)  and  Scarlet  Letter  (1850)  were  historical 
romances  as  much  as  those  of  Cooper,  but  in  a  different 
sense.  Hawthorne's  interest  lies  not  in  a  plot  of  adven- 
ture but  in  the  analysis  of  moral  impulses,  of  tempera- 
ment and  character,  of  the  essential  quaUties,  indeed,  of 
Puritan  life.  No  one  portrayed  better  than  he  its  pictu- 
resque elements,  —  the  little  town  hemmed  in  by  the 
forest,  the  quaint  garb  and  speech,  the  medley  of  relig- 
ion and  superstition.  But  it  was  the  life  of  the  spirit 
with  which  he  was  preoccupied,  and,  as  in  the  Marble 
Faun  (i860),  the  tendency  is  always  toward  the  allegori- 
cal, as  if  he  would  say,  "  Thus  lives  the  soul  of  man,  and 
these  are  the  crises  through  which  it  passes,  whether  to- 
day, or  centuries  ago,  whether  in  the  Old  World  or  the 
New."  Hawthorne's  mind  was  not  morbid,  and  his  style 
has  lurking  within  it  an  element  of  the  humorous  and  the 
grotesque,  which  tempers  the  sombreness  of  the  tragic 
and  heightens  the  effect  of  his  quiet  mirth. 

176.  The    Novel   after   Hawthorne.  —  Mention    must 
also  be  made  of  Mrs.  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe's  Uncle 


296  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAi^. 

Tonics  Cabin  (1852),  a  novel  which  has  probably  had  a 
larger  circulation  than  any  other  book  of  the  century,  and 
of  which  Lincoln  said,  only  half  in  jest,  that  it  had  brought 
about  the  Civil  War.  Mrs.  Stowe  wrote  many  other  books, 
some  of  which  give  quaint  pictures  of  rural  life  in  New 
England,  but  none  of  them  equalled  her  romance  of  slav- 
ery, which  was  translated  into  many  tongues  and  read 
everywhere  by  the  poor  and  oppressed,  as  well  as  by  all 
who  sympathised  with  them.  It  owed  its  extraordinary 
power,  not  to  graces  of  style  or  peculiar  skill  in  narrative, 
—  though  the  author  possessed  such  skill  to  a  consider- 
able degree,  —  but  to  the  fact  that  the  subject  involved 
was  then  burning  in  the  hearts  of  men,  and  to  the  fact 
that,  as  no  one  had  foreseen,  the  strongest  possible  argu- 
ments against  slavery  were  not  those  derived  from  the 
Constitution  or  from  any  theory  as  to  the  abstract  rights 
of  man,  but  the  elemental  feelings  aroused  by  this  artless 
tale  of  a  country  clergyman's  wife,  who,  busied  with  her 
housework  and  her  babies,  had  yet  time  to  brood  over 
the  wrongs  done  by  law  to  the  helpless  and  the  innocent. 
Poe  died  in  1849,  Cooper  in  185 1,  Irving  in  1859,  Haw- 
thorne in  1864.  When  the  Civil  War  was  over  and  there 
was  again  a  surplus  of  energy  to  devote  to  fiction,  the 
last  of  the  earlier  generation  of  story-tellers  in  America 
had  passed  away.  Slowly  there  grew  up  a  new  genera- 
tion, but  it  had  other  subjects  and  other  ways.  The 
effect  of  the  war  had  been  to  break  down  in  many  ways 
the  barriers  to  complete  understanding  and  sympathy 
between  different  parts  of  the  country,  and  to  allow  us  to 


«t  1>R0SE   IN   THE   UNITED   STATES  29;? 

form  stronger  ties  of  association  with  other  nations.  The 
bitter  experience  of  the  tragedy  of  national  and  individual 
life  gained  through  the  great  conflict  had  swept  away 
many  national  and  local  absurdities,  and  brought  us  into 
the  full  current  of  modern  thought  and  feeling.  The 
results  of  this  clarifying  process  were  two :  we  gained 
interest  in  ourselves,  and  we  were  in  a  position  to  appre- 
ciate the  contemporary  movements  of  European  thought. 
Up  to  1870  no  one  had  written  well  of  modern  American 
life.  Cooper  had  confined  himself  largely  to  colonial 
and  revolutionary  times,  Hawthorne  and  Poe  lived  in  a 
world  of  dreams.  But  from  the  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp 
(1870)  in  which  Francis  Bret  Harte  depicted,  some- 
what after  the  manner  of  Dickens,  the  rough  but  sterling 
characters  of  the  extreme  West,  to  the  end  of  the  cen- 
tury, the  trend  of  fiction  was  towards  the  portrayal  of 
characters  distinctive  of  special  parts  of  the  country, 
scarcely  any  section  of  which  is  not  now  well  represented 
in  current  literature.  Though  romance  has  happily  not 
died  out  from  American  life  or  American  fiction,  there 
has  also  been  a  strong  trend  towards  reaUsm  in  fiction,  the 
leaders  in  this  movement,  William  Dean  Howells  and 
Henry  James,  following,  with  important  variations,  the 
general  method  of  the  strong  European  school,  from 
which  England  has  to  a  great  degree  held  herself  aloof 
(page  265).  It  is  also  interesting  to  notice  the  promi- 
nent part  played  in  the  literature  of  this  period  by  the 
short  story,  which,  from  Poe  and  Hawthorne  on,  has  been 
a  favourite  with  American  authors,  and  which  has  proved 


2gB  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

an  excellent  vehicle  for  the  studies  of  local  character, 
towards  which,  as  has  just  been  said,  prose  fiction  so 
strongly  tended. 

177.  Statesmen. — A  democratic  government  is  by 
nature  prolific  in  political  orators,  who  arouse  the  people 
to  the  appreciation  of  whatever  is  essential  in  matters 
under  public  discussion,  and  who,  addressing  large  and 
representative  audiences,  and  taking  for  their  themes 
national  issues,  are  themselves  incited  to  their  fullest 
powers  by  the  magnitude  of  the  interests  involved,  and 
the  fact  that  they  stand  face  to  face  with  those  to  whom 
they  appeal,  and  do  not  address  the  impersonal  reader 
through  the  medium  of  the  printed  page.  In  the  United 
States,  the  period  between  the  War  of  1812  and  the  Civil 
War  was  especially  rich  in  such  orators,  particularly  in 
the  Senate,  where  for  forty  years  debate  centred  on  the 
most  vital  questions,  affecting  the  unity  and  welfare  of 
the  young  republic.  Of  these  statesmen  the  greatest  was 
Daniel  Webster,  whose  penetrating  intellect,  magnificent 
voice,  grand  presence,  sincere  devotion  to  the  cause  of 
national  unity,  and  extraordinary  power  of  marshalling 
facts  and  principles  so  as  to  produce  conviction,  have 
caused  him  to  be  ranked  among  the  great  orators  of  the 
world,  and  made  him  one  of  the  strongest  forces  in  that 
slow  process  by  which  the  inhabitants  of  many  federated 
states  came  to  feel  themselves  one  nation. 

The  work  of  Abraham  Lincoln  began  as  that  of  Web- 
ster closed,  and  it  has  become  plain  that  the  work  of  both 
was  part  of  the  same  great  task  of  awakening  a  nation. 


I 


XI  PROSE   IN   THE    UNITED    STATES  299 

Great  minds,  like  those  of  Hamilton  and  Webster,  had 
long  held  forth  the  idea  of  complete  national  unity.  With 
Hamilton  the  idea  was  a  political  abstraction.  Webster 
was  the  voice  that  taught  the  concept  to  the  people.  Lin- 
coln, born  of  the  very  heart  of  the  people,  self-taught,  and 
growing  spontaneously  towards  the  right,  was  the  token 
that  the  mass  of  the  people  had  unconsciously  made  that 
concept  their  own,  and  became  the  great  instrument  by 
which  that  concept  became  realised.  A  less  powerful 
orator  than  Webster,  who  spoke  after  the  fashion  of 
Demosthenes  and  Cicero,  he  uttered  his  plain  thoughts 
only  in  the  homely  speech  of  the  people.  Not  much  of 
what  he  said  and  wrote  belongs  to  literature,  but  those 
few  words,  as  in  the  Address  at  Gettysburg  (1863)  and 
the  Second  Inaugural  Address  (1865),  sank  into  the 
hearts  of  men,  for  he  spoke  in  the  name  of  the  nation 
and  as  its  good  genius. 

1 78.  Historians.  —  The  first  American  historian  who 
was  also  a  man  of  letters  was  undoubtedly  Cotton  Mather, 
whose  conception  of  the  Magnalia  Christi  Americana 
was  that  it  should  record  all  that  was  essential  in  the 
history  of  the  church,  which  was  to  him  what  our  country 
is  to  us.  But  it  was  destined  that  more  than  a  century 
and  a  half  should  pass  before  a  writer  of  equal  power 
should  attempt  to  deal  with  any  important  part  of  our 
history.  We  may  except  Irving's  biographies  of  Colum- 
bus and  Washington,  works  of  solid  merit,  whose  real 
value  has  been  obscured  by  their  author's  reputation  as 
a  writer  of  stories.     But  Irving  was  not  a  historian  of  the 


30O  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

first  rank,  and  William  Hickling  Prescott  and  John 
LoTHROP  Motley,  who  were,  chose  foreign  themes. 
Prescott  was  fascinated  by  the  romance  of  Spanish  dis- 
covery. His  Conquest  of  Mexico  (1843)  ^^^  Conquest 
of  Peru  (1847)  were  the  result  of  elaborate  and  pains- 
taking research,  a  task  made  more  onerous  by  the  fact 
that  he  was  nearly  blind.  The  entrancing  theme  and  his 
firm  but  somewhat  cold  style  made  his  works  widely  read, 
and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  science  of  archaeology 
was  then  so  little  advanced  as  to  allow  him  to  form  an 
altogether  false  conception  of  the  primitive  people  of 
whom  he  wrote.  Motley,  equally  attracted  by  Spanish 
history,  chose  for  a  theme  the  struggle  with  the  Nether- 
lands and  the  establishment  there  of  a  democratic  gov- 
ernment, —  a  subject  which  he  investigated  with  equal 
thoroughness,  and  treated,  in  his  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Re- 
public (1856)  and  History  of  the  United  Netherlands 
(1861-68),  in  a  noble  and  impassioned  style,  and  with 
sympathy  for  the  cause  of  political  and  religious  freedom. 
Francis  Parkman,  superior  to  both  as  a  historian  and  a 
man  of  letters,  chose  the  struggle  between  France  and 
England  for  supremacy  in  the  New  World,  —  an  epic 
theme,  which,  though  partly  disabled  by  ill  health,  he 
treated  in  full  in  a  series  of  works,  beginning  with  the 
Conspiracy  of  Pontiac  (1851)  and  closing  with  A  Half- 
Century  of  Conflict  (1892).  Parkman's  mastery  of  his 
subject  was  complete,  and  his  st}'le,  —  clear,  pure,  supple, 
and  brilliant,  —  though  less  sonorous  than  that  of  Gibbon, 
Jias  not  been  surpassed  by  that  of  any  historian.     The 


»  PROSE   IN   THE   UNITED    STATES  3OI 

history  of  the  United  States  has  been  attempted,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  by  many  excellent  writers,  among  whom 
should  be  mentioned  George  Bancroft,  and  has  been 
made  the  subject  of  much  detailed  research,  but  no  one 
has  yet  treated  it  in  such  a  fashion  that  his  work  has 
become  literature. 

179.  The  New  England  Group  of  Essayists.' — As  we 
have  said,  it  was  in  New  England  that  the  life  of  the  in- 
tellect and  of  the  spirit  was  the  most  intense  in  the  seven- 
teenth and  the  eighteenth  centuries.  The  same  statement 
holds  true  of  the  nineteenth  century,  up  to,  at  least,  the 
time  of  the  Civil  War.  The  Puritan  inheritance  was  a 
remarkable  one.  On  generation  after  generation  it  had 
impressed  the  immense  importance  of  the  soul  and  its 
relation  to  a  personal  God,  thereby  awakening  to  an  ex- 
traordinary degree  the  consciousness  of  the  individual. 
It  had,  moreover,  kept  the  eyes  of  man  open  to  the  mys- 
terious side  of  existence,  teaching  him  to  watch  for  mani- 
festations of  God  and  the  devil.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
narrowness  and  bigotry  of  the  sect  had  sealed  all  the 
aesthetic  senses  of  man,  forcing  him  to  fix  his  attention 
alone  upon  his  own  sins  and  the  just  anger  of  an  avenging 
God,  and  rendering  greater  his  torments  on  earth  by 
teaching,  explicitly  or  implicitly,  that  his  doom  or  his 
pardon  had  been  predestined  from  all  eternity.  As  time 
passed  by,  this  grim  conception  of  Ufe  became  modified. 
The  New  England  colleges  had  gone  steadily  on  with 
their  work  of  education.  More  important  still,  the  com- 
mon sense  of  the  people  awoke,  touching  life  with  humour 


302  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

and  sagacity.  Beginning  in  the  early  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  there  arose  what  might  be  called  a  human- 
istic or  humanitarian  movement,  both  within  and  without 
the  church,  which  insisted  less  on  man's  innate  moral  de- 
pravity and  more  on  his  power,  in  many  ways,  to  lay  him- 
self open  to  spiritual  influences,  and  by  high  resolve  and 
earnest  effort  to  make  himself  and  the  world  better. 
Cutting  itself  adrift  from  the  church  sometimes,  the  move- 
ment showed  itself  in  strange  and  transient  sects  and  in 
wild  schemes  for  the  better  organization  of  society,  and 
produced  swarms  of  fanatic  reformers.  It  was  also  closely 
associated  with  political  and  literary  movements.  It  was 
the  mother  of  abolitionism,  and  it  led  directly  to  the  tran- 
cendental  theories  that  were  the  basis  of  Emerson's  phil- 
osophy. Slowly  the  reticent  New  England  mind,  so  cold 
and  grim,  so  closed  to  aught  but  God,  opened  also  to 
man,  and  the  result  was,  for  half  a  century,  an  outpouring 
of  the  heart  in  prose  and  song  that  constitutes  the  major 
part  of  American  literature.  Of  the  writers  we  have 
mentioned,  Webster,  Hawthorne,  Prescott,  Motley,  and 
Parkman  were  New  Englanders,  and  of  those  whom  we 
have  still  to  mention,  Emerson,  Thoreau,  Holmes,  Lowell, 
Bryant,  Longfellow,  and  Whittier.  Most  of  them,  too, 
came  of  Massachusetts  stock,  and  are  associated  with  the 
north-eastern  part  of  that  state,  where  the  Puritan  civi- 
lisation put  out  its  deepest  roots,  and  where  the  humani- 
tarian movement  found  its  chief  seat. 

The  humanitarian  movement  may  then  be  in  general 
defined  as  an  awakening  to  a  sense  of  human  relations. 


«  PROSE   IN   THE   UNITED    STATES  303 

In  this  literary  and  philosophical  movement  the  chief 
figure  for  many  years  was  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  who 
combined  the  two  strains  of  New  England  thought  repre- 
sented by  Cotton  Mather  and  by  Franklin.  For  two 
centuries  one  group  of  minds  had  been  mystics,  and 
another  the  incarnation  of  common  sense ;  one  stood  for 
the  priesthood,  the  other  for  the  people.  Emerson's 
fathers  had  long  been  clergymen,  and  he  began  his  career 
by  preaching.  His  mind  instinctively  turned  to  the  un- 
seen. His  philosophy,  best  expressed  perhaps  in  Nature 
(1836),  was  that  of  the  German  idealists,  —  that  all  vis- 
ible is  but  a  form  of  the  spirit,  a  manifestation  of  God ; 
that  man  himself  is  another  division  of  that  same  spirit, 
having  knowledge  of  God,  its  source,  through  innate  ideas. 
But  though  his  thought  ran  at  times  to  the  extreme  of 
mysticism,  it  had  that  singular  characteristic  which  we 
find  in  Franklin  and  in  Lincoln,  and  which  makes  us  feel 
them  American.  He  loved  simple  things  and  ways  and 
people.  He  saw  into  the  hearts  of  men  with  eyes  not 
distorted  by  erudition  or  dogma,  and  read  there  the  es- 
sential elements  of  human  action.  More  like  Montaigne 
than  any  other  European  author,  he  loved  to  be  the  voice 
of  wisdom  and  to  utter  in  the  homeliest  manner  the  most 
vital  truths.  He  lectured  much  and  wrote  much,  in- 
fluencing men  strongly  in  both  ways.  His  Essays  (1841, 
1844),  Representative  Men  (1850),  and  Conduct  of  Life 
(i860),  were  great  forces  in  awakening  the  people,  for, 
whatever  subject  he  treated,  he  preached  freedom  of 
thought,  nobility  of  mind,  and  high  resolution. 


304  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP 

Henry  David  Thoreau,  Emerson's  friend  and  fellow- 
townsman,  published  only  two  books  during  his  lifetime, 
A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac  Rivers  (1848), 
and  Walden,  or  Life  in  the  Woods  (1854),  though  since 
his  death  several  other  volumes  have  been  compiled  from 
his  papers.  Thoreau  was  a  man  of  education,  but  he 
preferred  to  support  himself  by  the  work  of  his  own 
hands.  He  was  an  expert  pencil-maker,  an  excellent 
surveyor,  and  by  the  intermittent  exercise  of  these  em- 
ployments, as  well  as  by  farm  labour,  he  earned  enough  for 
his  simple  needs.  Much  of  his  time  was  spent  in  the  open 
air,  either  in  the  woods  and  fields  about  his  native  place, 
or  in  occasional  longer  journeys  through  New  England. 
His  ruling  passions  were  his  deep  and  constant  delight 
in  nature  and  his  love  of  simplicity  and  independence. 
Both  passions  were  most  completely  and  naturally  grati- 
fied when  he  passed  more  than  two  years  in  a  little  hut 
which  he  built  by  Walden  pond  near  Concord,  tilling  a 
small  plot  of  ground,  and  depending  for  sustenance  and 
for  enjoyment  almost  entirely  on  his  own  resources.  His 
books  are  the  reflection  of  a  singularly  quiet  and  beautiful 
character,  self-poised  and  self-controlled  like  that  of  a 
stoic,  but  full  of  a  sympathy  with  nature  that  became  at 
times  almost  mystic.  No  one  has  known  nature  in  New 
England  better  than  he,  or  approached  him  in  the 
description  of  it,  or  given  better  expression  to  the  type 
of  New  England  feeling  that  finds  content  and  high 
thoughts  in  a  quiet  and  simple  country  life. 

Few  contrasts  can  be  greater  than  that  between  Eraer- 


«  PROSE    IN   THE    UNITED    STATES  305 

son  and  Thoreau,  with  their  gentle  and  thoughtful  country 
ways,  and  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  long  professor  of 
anatomy  at  the  Harvard  Medical  School  in  Boston. 
Holmes  said  jestingly  of  his  city  that  it  was  the  hub  of  the 
solar  universe,  but  it  is  plain  that  in  his  heart  he  felt  this 
to  be  true,  for  neither  his  subjects  nor  his  sympathies 
often  allow  him  to  stray  far  beyond  the  city  borders. 
His  genius  had  in  it  no  touch  of  the  mystic ;  he  was  not 
greatly  impressed  by  nature ;  he  did  not  love  solitude; 
his  social  and  professional  connections  held  him  aloof 
from  the  common  folk ;  he  was  essentially  an  aristocrat. 
But  his  intellect,  if  little  touched  by  the  imagination,  was 
keen,  and  his  wit  brilliant ;  and  he  was  a  shrewd  observer 
of  human  nature.  Of  his  verse  we  shall  speak  later ;  it 
was  by  his  prose  that  he  caught  the  ear  of  the  people. 
In  the  first  volume  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  destined  to 
contain  for  a  period  so  much  of  the  best  in  American 
literature,  appeared  his  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table 
(1858),  and  this  was  followed  by  The  Professor  at  the 
Breakfast  Table  (i860),  and  The  Poet  at  the  Breakfast 
Table  (1872).  They  are  essay-novels,  and  begin  quite 
after  the  fashion  of  Tristram  Shandy.  The  novel  ele- 
ment, though  slight,  is  worth  taking  account  of,  in  that  it 
is  so  complete  a  foil  to  the  work  of  Hawthorne.  Holmes 
takes  the  types  of  a  Boston  boarding-house  as  his  charac- 
ters. He  throws  no  veil  of  glamour  over  them,  as  Haw- 
thorne would  have  done,  but  judges  them  as  a  physician 
might,  with  an  accurate  knowledge  of  their  physical  and 
piental   peculiarities.     The  shrewd  estimates  of  people, 


306  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP. 

the  pretty  little  romances  he  imagines  about  them  —  as 
a  man  might  imagine  such  things  for  his  own  amusement 
—  pleased  everyone ;  and  everyone  was  also  pleased  by 
the  essay  elements,  the  wise  and  witty  opinions  of  men 
and  things,  the  humour,  the  pathos,  the  fashion  all  his 
own,  in  which,  as  it  were,  he  turned  inside  out  the  gar- 
ment of  life,  allowing  men  to  smile  at  the  oddities  re- 
vealed, but  showing  them  also,  by  this  whimsical  method, 
something  more  of  its  true  shape  than  they  would  other- 
wise have  known. 

Most  of  the  writers  whom  we  have  mentioned  in  this 
chapter  were  graduated  from  Harvard  College,  which  in 
the  first  half  of  the  century  performed  a  unique  service 
in  firing  the  ambition  of  young  men  in  letters  at  the  same 
time  that  she  trained  their  judgment  and  moulded  their 
taste.  George  Ticknor,  the  historian  of  Spanish  litera- 
ture, held  the  famous  professorship  of  belles-lettres  from 
1820  to  1835,  and  was  succeeded  by  Longfellow,  and  he 
in  his  turn,  in  1855,  by  James  Russell  Lowell,  who,  like 
his  predecessor,  was  already  a  poet,  and  who  was  also  to 
become  the  first  critic  in  the  land.  Lowell  had  many 
accomplishments.  He  had  a  wide  knowledge  of  the 
romance  languages  and  literatures,  and  of  EngUsh  prose 
and  poetry.  He  was  for  years  editor  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  and  of  the  North  American  Review,  and  he 
served  as  ambassador  both  to  Spain  and  to  England. 
But  his  most  conspicuous  service  to  his  country  and  to 
literature  were  his  critical  essays,  which  deal  almost 
invariably  with  great  Uterature  and  are  the  fruit  of  long 


XI  PROSE  IN  THE  UNITED   STATES  307 

reading  and  study.  Lowell  had  a  genius  for  criticism. 
His  style  was  rich  and  buoyant,  abounding  in  happy 
fancies  and  striking  turns  of  expression.  Less  dogmatic 
than  Arnold,  and  less  occupied  with  the  foundation  of  a 
critical  method,  he  wrote  with  more  enthusiasm  as  well 
as  with  greater  knowledge.  With  all  his  interest  in 
foreign  literature,  a  sound  knowledge  of  which  he  did 
much  to  make  possible  in  America,  he  was  a  lover  of  his 
own  country  and  our  own  letters.  He  was  of  the  stock 
that  made  New  England,  and  he  never  lost  his  deep 
affection  for  her  pecuHar  characteristics,  her  idiosyncra- 
sies of  language  and  temper,  and  the  great  principles 
which  she  has  done  so  much  to  establish  in  American 
Hfe. 

The  chapter  would  be  incomplete  were  we  to  omit 
mention  of  Samuel  Langhorne  Clemens,  —  better  known 
under  his  pseudonym,  Mark  Twain,  whose  works  have 
perhaps  been  more  widely  read  than  those  of  any  other 
English  author  of  this  century.  He  may  be  classed  as  a 
novelist.  Huckleberry  Finn  (1884)  and  its  sequels,  as 
well  as  other  stories,  are,  apart  from  their  ludicrous  side, 
of  great  value  as  fiction,  for  they  portray  with  great 
vividness  and  accuracy  phases  of  American  life  before 
the  Civil  War,  particularly  in  the  Mississippi  valley. 
But  his  wide  fame  is  chiefly  due  to  his  Innocents 
Abroad  (1869),  Roughing  It  (1872),  and  A  Tramp 
Abroad  (1880),  which  not  only  provoked  hearty  laugh- 
ter but  served  also  to  mould  the  thought  of  the 
nation.    Beneath  all  his  extravagance  and  whimsicality 


308  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAt. 

of  statement,  beneath  apparent  irreverence  and  (some- 
times) even  coarseness,  there  lurks  a  serious  and  a  high 
motive.  Mark  Twain,  like  Franklin  and  Lincoln,  came 
of  the  people,  and  he  represents,  in  much  the  same  way 
that  Lincoln  did,  the  mass  of  the  people,  —  their  native 
ideals,  their  real  temper,  their  impatience  of  mere  learn- 
ing and  mere  convention  and  mere  fancy.  And  so  his 
own  laughter  was  echoed  by  theirs  whenever  he  touched 
on  vital  questions  of  character  and  conduct,  showing,  for 
example,  as  he  did  in  Innocents  Abroad^  the  foolishness 
of  that  form  of  European  travel  that  cultivates  affectation, 
mock  appreciation,  and  the  worship  of  the  mere  acci- 
dents of  antiquity,  which  civilisation  has  long  justly 
discarded.  A  deadly  foe  of  sham  and  cant  in  all  their 
forms,  strong  in  his  sanity  and  in  his  reliance  upon  the 
beliefs  and  principles  of  the  people,  he  has  been  as 
brave  a  soldier  for  the  cause  of  humanity  as  was  Heine. 


xn  POETRY   IN   THE    UNITED    STATES  309 


CHAPTER  XII 

POETRY  IN  THE  UNITED   STATES 

180.  Prose  rather  than  poetry  has  been  the  natural 
form  of  expression  in  American  literature,  —  a  form 
wholly  consonant  with  our  national  mood,  that  of  clear- 
headed, well-ordered  aspiration.  The  part  of  literature 
which  we  call  poetry  is  great  in  importance,  but  very 
limited  in  its  field.  Only  ideas  of  certain  sorts  can  be 
expressed  by  it.  Its  production  is  dependent,  to  a  large 
degree,  on  a  state  of  society  in  which  an  author  is  free  to 
live  a  life  of  resolute  leisure  like  that  of  Tennyson  or 
Shelley,  free  from  all  that  would  divert  his  fancy  or  his 
imagination  from  communion  with  his  dreamlike  ideals. 
Such  opportunities  the  American  social  system  rarely  fur- 
nishes. Our  thoughts  have  been  of  necessity  immediately 
concerned  with  the  present,  —  with  what  has  been  done, 
with  what  must  now  be  done.  Prose  is,  therefore,  our 
characteristic  language,  —  the  language  of  debate,  and 
discussion,  and  explanation,  the  language  of  the  orator, 
the  statesman,  the  historian,  the  critic,  the  novelist. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  there  are  three 
elements  in  American  life  that  have  had  a  great  influence 


310  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP, 

in  moulding  the  national  character,  and  which  have,  to 
some  degree,  given  to  our  poetry  traits  peculiarly  Ameri- 
can. These  are,  first,  the  influence  of  American  scenery, 
so  wild,  so  dominating,  so  long  free  from  the  touch  of 
man;  second,  the  religious  influence  of  the  forms  of 
dissenting  Christianity  most  wide-spread  among  us,  all 
of  which  have  tended  to  awaken  an  intense  interest  in 
the  inner  life,  the  life  of  the  soul,  with  its  subtle  hopes 
and  fears,  with  its  tenderness  of  conscience,  its  sympathy 
with  human  frailty,  its  reliance  on  the  unseen ;  third,  the 
pervading  influence  of  a  well-assimilated  democracy,  in 
which  there  was  long  little  difference  in  comfort,  edu- 
cation, and  refinement  between  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
the  great  and  the  humble,  and  where  each  individual 
and  each  household  knew  the  joys  of  homely  living. 
These  elements  the  attentive  student  will  find  running 
throughout  American  verse.  Unlike  the  prose  of  our 
century,  it  has  not  been  in  volume  and  value  com- 
parable with  that  produced  by  some  other  great  nations, 
and  particularly  by  England,  but  it  has  yet  had  its 
modest  glories. 

i8i.  Early  American  Verse. — There  is  little  early 
American  verse  worth  mentioning.  Between  the  landing 
of  the  Pilgrims  and  Bryant's  Thanatopsis  (1817)  there 
had  passed  two  centuries  in  which  no  melodious  voice 
was  heard.  Religion  had  stifled  poetry ;  the  trend  of  life 
had  been  away  from  it.  If  we  had  been  a  primitive  race 
we  might  have  had  our  epics  and  ballads ;  but  we  were 
too  old  for  these,  and  too  young,  too  distracted  by  toil, 


xn  POETRY   IN   THE    UNITED    STATES  3II 

to  sing  in  a  new  fashion  of  a  new  life.  What  verse  there 
was  followed  European  models,  —  feeble  imitations,  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  of  Donne  and  Quarles  and  Du 
Bartas ;  and,  in  the  eighteenth,  of  Butler  and  Pope.  The 
first  sign  of  quickening  spirit  was  the  swarm  of  poUtical 
and  satirical  ballads  in  Revolutionary  times,  of  which 
survives  only  the  rollicking  tune  and  bantering  words  of 
Yankee  Doodle.  After  the  establishment  of  the  Repub- 
lic, we  have,  in  addition,  a  few  poems  endeared  to  us  by 
tradition  as  the  first  lispings  of  patriotic  verse,  Hail  Co- 
lumbia (1798)  and  the  Star  Spangled  Banner  (1814). 
Then  came  more  ambitious,  but  still  artless  attempts  to 
sing  of  New  World  stuff,  such  as  those  made  by  Philip 
Freneau,  who,  before  Cooper,  saw  the  romance  of  the 
Indian,  of  whom  his  fathers  had  thought  only  as  a  danger- 
ous beast ;  or  by  Joseph  Rodman  Drake,  who  wrote  the 
American  Flag,  the  best  piece  of  patriotic  verse  in  the 
early  century,  and  the  Culprit  Fay  (1835),  in  which 
the  birds  and  beasts  and  flowers  of  our  own  land  begin 
to  appear  in  our  poetry ;  or  by  his  friend,  Fitz-Greene 
Halleck,  who  wrote  so  tenderly  of  his  death.  Nor 
must  we  omit  mention  of  John  Howard  Payne,  whose 
Home,  Sweet  Home  (1823)  touched  deeply  the  hearts 
of  a  land  where  men  migrate  so  freely. 

i8ia.  Bryant.  —  American  poetry,  however,  begins 
with  William  Cullen  Bryant.  Born  in  1 794,  in  the  Berk- 
shire highlands,  he  shared  as  a  boy  in  the  austere  life  of 
early  New  England,  where,  though  few  knew  want,  every 
farmer's  boy  was  hardened  to   fatigue  and  cold,  and 


312  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAP. 

taught  stern  lessons  of  frugality  by  tasks  that  bred  reso- 
luteness and  self-control.  The  terrors  of  inexorable  fore- 
ordination  and  punishment  were  ceasing  somewhat  to 
haunt  men's  minds,  but  there  was  little  innocent  mirth  and 
spontaneous  joy.  Life  was  work,  and  work  against  odds. 
Bryant  spent  the  years  of  his  manhood  in  New  York, 
where  he  became  a  distinguished  journalist,  but  his  best 
verse,  Thanatopsis,  To  a  Water-Fowl,  The  Death  of  the 
Flowers,  was  either  written  in  his  boyhood  or  is  wholly 
removed  in  spirit  from  his  later  urban  Kfe.  It  breathes  a 
high  spirit  of  austerity  and  stoic  resignation,  and  is  the 
song  of  men  who,  escaped  from  the  haunting  terrors  of 
superstition,  look  anew  on  nature,  and  see  in  it  only  what 
is  cold  and  dark  and  silent  —  the  stem,  unsetting  stars, 
the  silent  beauty  of  the  wilderness,  the  desolate  sea,  but 
are  still  "  sustained  and  soothed  by  an  unfaltering  trust." 
182.  Longfellow  and  "Whittier.  —  The  best-known 
name  in  American  poetry  is  that  of  Henry  Wadsworth 
Longfellow,  whose  first  experiments  in  verse  were  pub- 
lished as  early  as  1826.  His  ambition  from  boyhood 
was  to  enter  the  then  entirely  unprofitable  field  of  litera- 
ture, but  his  interests  were  fortunately  in  part  those  of 
the  student  and  teacher.  His  work  as  instructor  in  mod- 
em languages  at  Bowdoin  College  attracted  attention,  and 
after  several  years  of  study  and  travel  abroad  he  suc- 
ceeded George  Ticknor  in  the  now  famous  professorship 
of  belles-lettres  at  Harvard  College.  Longfellow's  work 
as  a  teacher  was  of  great  service  to  the  cause  of  letters  in 
America,  for  no  one  in  his  time  did  more  to  diffuse  the 


Xll  POETRY   IN   THE   UNITED    STATES  313 

knowledge  and  appreciation  of  what  was  best  in  European 
literature.  As  a  poet,  a  part  of  his  influence  lay  along 
the  same  lines.  He  translated  much  foreign  verse, 
always  with  grace  and  fidelity,  setting  the  seal  on  his 
labours  by  his  memorable  rendering  of  the  Divine  Comedy 
(1867).  But  his  influence  was  greater  than  that  of  a 
translator.  The  Golden  Legend  {i2>^i)  and  almost  num- 
berless minor  pieces,  bred  of  his  own  fancy  or  based  on 
foreign  originals,  reproduced  the  inner  spirit  of  mediaeval 
times,  —  at  least  on  its  gentler  side,  —  the  glamour  and 
romance  alike  of  southern  climes  and  of  the  north. 
A  close  student  of  European  Uterature  and  sensitive 
to  literary  movements,  he  conceived  in  his  apprentice 
days  the  idea  of  creating  new  forms  in  American 
Uterature,  by  applying  to  native  material  the  methods 
already  common  elsewhere.  The  idea  was  a  natural 
one  and  the  execution  was  admirable.  His  two  early 
attempts  at  native  ballads.  The  Skeleton  in  Armor  and 
The  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus,  were  entirely  successful, 
and  his  later  attempts  at  the  pastoral  and  the  epic  — 
Evangeline  (1847),  ^^^^  ^^  manner  of  Goethe's  Her- 
mann and  Dorothea,  and  Hiawatha  (1855),  in  the 
metre  of  the  Finnish  Kalevala,  —  were  not  only  im- 
mensely popular,  serving  their  purpose  in  awakening  the 
country  to  the  romance  of  its  own  soil,  but  must  remain 
permanent  monuments  of  our  literature.  Though  Long- 
fellow was  a  master  pioneer  in  this  way,  he  was  most 
loved  by  the  people  for  the  gentle  moralising  of  his  verse. 
A  kindly  man,  devoted  to  his  work  and  to  his  family  and 


314  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CKA». 

friends,  he  cared  little  for  the  great  contemporary  move- 
ments in  thought  and  politics.  He  loved  the  outward 
aspects  of  nature,  without  passion  or  mysticism,  and  drew 
from  them,  with  the  quaintness  of  the  early  German 
romanticists,  little  lessons,  as  in  The  Rainy  Day.  He 
was  not  a  great  thinker,  and  his  work,  like  his  life,  held 
aloof  from  great  or  intricate  problems ;  but  he  sang 
sweetly  and  gently,  his  heart  was  pure,  his  sympathy 
strong,  and  he  lived  a  simple  life.  He  was  the  first  to 
reveal  to  us  the  magic  of  foreign  poetry  and  to  show  us 
that  American  subjects  had  as  much  romance  as  those 
of  Europe.  He  appealed  to  the  young  and  old,  to  men 
and  women,  and  he  was  the  greatest  household  poet  of 
the  century. 

An  almost  exact  contemporary  of  Longfellow  was  John 
Greenleaf  Whittier,  born  in  1807,  in  Haverhill,  Massa- 
chusetts, of  a  family  that  had  been  permanently  settled 
in  that  vicinity  since  the  early  days  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  His  early  life  was  that  of  the  ordinary  farmer's 
lad,  full  of  labour  and  hardship,  and  free  from  affectation. 
His  formal  education  was  slight,  but  he  knew  men  and 
good  books,  and  his  skill  as  a  rhymster  and  his  interest 
in  public  affairs  led  him  into  journalism  and  politics.  By 
1832  he  had  won  a  name  for  himself  in  both  fields,  and 
seemed  likely  to  represent  his  district  in  Congress,  but 
his  deUcate  health  forced  him  to  give  up  his  ambitions  in 
either  direction,  and  he  retired  to  his  native  county,  where 
he  spent,  with  slight  exceptions,  the  remainder  of  his 
long  life.     Whittier  was  first  known  by  his  political  verse. 


XII  POETRY    IN   THE   UNITED    STATES  31$ 

A  Quaker,  with  the  spirit  of  a  reformer,  he  early  joined 
the  anti-slavery  party,  and  became  one  of  the  leading 
abolitionists,  and  certainly  the  great  poet  of  the  move- 
ment. His  verses  were  efficacious  in  moulding  the 
opinions  of  all  ranks  of  society  in  the  North  and  West, 
from  the  President  and  his  Cabinet  to  the  lowest  soldier 
or  tax-payer;  but  they  were  instruments  in  a  transient 
struggle,  the  product  of  discord  and  sectional  feeling,  and 
cannot  perhaps  be  expected  to  remain  permanently  in 
the  national  memory. 

Whittier's  religious  verse  is  much  more  national  in 
character.  His  Quaker  tolerance,  his  life  of  moral  ear- 
nestness, his  gentle,  unspotted  character,  and  his  simple 
way  of  taking  the  world,  made  him  a  fitting  spokesman 
in  verse  of  the  more  liberal  religious  feeling  of  the  day. 
It  is,  however,  by  his  verses  on  country  life,  as  in  Snow- 
jBount/  (1866)  and  T/ie  Tent  on  the  Beach  (1867),  rather 
than  by  his  political  or  religious  poetry,  that  Whittier  will 
be  remembered.  A  bachelor  and  an  invalid,  not  bound 
by  the  ties  that  commonly  blind  men  to  wider  thoughts 
than  society  and  ambition,  following  pursuits  that  gave 
ample  leisure  for  meditation,  he  lived,  with  Quaker  and 
Puritan  frugality,  a  life  full  of  reminiscence  of  boyhood 
days  and  of  the  country  ways  that  had  never  ceased  to  be 
his.  And  this  reminiscence  and  this  sympathy  became 
the  voice  of  a  whole  multitude.  East  and  West,  that  still 
toiled  in  the  fields,  or  turned  gladly  back  in  spirit  from 
city  counting-houses  to  the  orchards  and  brooks  of  their 
early  years.     Without  Longfellow's  learning  and  cultiva- 


3l6  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAR 

tion,  he  rivalled  him  too  on  his  own  field,  reviving  inci- 
dents of  early  New  England  life  after  a  less  bookish 
fashion,  and  one  truer  alike  to  the  facts  and  to  the  temper 
of  the  time,  in  ballads  that  are  among  the  best  in  modem 
English  literature. 

183.  Emerson,  Holmes,  and  Lowell.  —  Longfellow  was 
closely  connected  with  the  group  of  New  England  prose- 
writers  described  in  the  preceding  chapter;  Whittier, 
owing  to  his  country  life  and  retiring  habits,  stood  some- 
what outside  of  it.  Hawthorne  and  Thoreau  were  not 
poets;  but  Emerson,  Holmes,  and  Lowell,  the  three 
remaining  figures  in  what  might  be  called  the  Boston  or 
Cambridge  school,  were  poets  as  well  as  prose- writers, 
though  their  fame  in  the  former  field  is  not  so  great  as 
in  the  latter. 

In  prose,  Emerson's  glory  was  that  by  his  noble  phi- 
losophy he  thrilled  the  young  and  earnest  with  the  desire 
to  live  lives  self-controlled,  self-reliant,  hopeful,  simple; 
and  his  voice  was  the  first  in  America  to  rouse  such 
enthusiasm  in  the  hearts  of  the  aspiring,  and  to  teach 
such  noble  lessons.  In  verse  Emerson's  influence  was 
not  different.  Indeed,  poetry  and  prose  seemed  to  him 
closely  akin.  His  imagination  once  kindled  and  finding 
vent  in  words,  it  was  merely  a  matter  of  throwing  them 
into  groups  of  one  kind  or  another,  or  of  so  altering  them 
at  times  that  they  fell  into  a  simple  rhythm  or  made 
simple  rhymes  or  assonances.  His  ear  was  not  keen  in 
either  respect,  and  it  is  said  that  at  times  he  scarcely 
knew  whether  what  be  had  written  was  prose  or  verse. 


XII  POETRY    IN    THE   UNITED    STATES  317 

Yet  such  was  the  naked  power  of  his  imagination  that,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  Hebrew  poets,  we  find  a  simple  art  the 
fitting  medium  for  thoughts  of  singular  simplicity  and 
remarkable  power.  The  thought  of  the  essays  is  in  large 
measure  that  of  the  poems,  which  are  mainly  gnomic  or 
didactic,  the  sage's  aphorisms,  pregnant  with  deep  sug- 
gestion, as  in  his  mystical  and  beautiful  Brahma.  Some- 
times, however,  he  undertook  historical  subjects,  as  in 
the  famous  Concord  Hymn,  or  was  moved  to  give  utter- 
ance to  the  emotion  caused  by  his  own  personal  experi- 
ence, as  in  the  most  touching  of  his  poems,  //  is  Time  to 
Be  Old  and  the  IThrenody.  But  his  best-known  work 
has  perhaps  been  his  nature  poems,  —  The  Humbk-Bee, 
Monadnock,  and  The  Snow-storm,  —  where  his  art  is 
more  like  that  of  Whittier,  and  stamps  them  both  as  men 
who  had  seen  nature  face  to  face,  with  the  eyes  of  simple 
humanity,  and  not  through  library  windows. 

Holmes  was  the  city  member  of  the  little  group,  and 
his  verse  has  the  urban  qualities  that  remind  us  of  Pope 
and  Queen  Anne's  London.  He  was  only  about  twenty 
when  his  spirited  lines  on  the  proposed  destruction  of  the 
old  frigate  Constitution  (1830)  were  on  everyone's  lips. 
His  first  volume  of  poems  (1836)  showed  the  quali- 
ties that  remained  his  throughout  life.  He  had  the  gift 
of  broad  and  farcical  humour,  the  more  delicate  art  of  wit, 
and  a  vein  of  genuine  pathos  and  serious  thought,  —  the 
last  at  its  best  in  the  Last  Leaf  and  the  Chambered  Nau- 
tilus. But  it  was  wit,  —  the  pun,  the  sparkling  jest,  the 
neatly  turned  and  salient  thought,  —  that  made  him  the 


3l8  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHA». 

favourite  poet  at  public  or  private  gatherings  in  his  native 
state  ;  and  though  Uttle  of  his  verse  on  trivial  topics  and 
occasions  now  no  longer  memorable  can  ultimately  sur- 
vive, it  is  astonishing  how  much  of  it  retains  its  interest. 
He  was  less  an  imitator  of  Pope  than  a  belated  member 
of  Pope's  own  school,  with  equal  wit  and  skill  in  epigram, 
and  a  power  over  Pope's  favourite  metre  that  has  not 
been  equalled  except  by  Pope. 

Like  Holmes,  Lowell  was  a  wit,  and  it  was  by  clever 
satire  and  humorous  criticism  that  he  first  won  favour  in 
his  Biglow  Papers  (1848  and  1867)  and  his  Fable  for 
Critics  (1848).  He  differs  from  Holmes,  however,  in 
that  his  talent  is  that  of  the  brilliant  improvisatore  rather 
than  that  of  the  somewhat  mechanical  artist,  and  that  he 
dealt  with  larger  subjects.  Holmes  had  an  eighteenth 
century  heart,  tolerant  and  kindly,  but  at  bottom  coldly 
observant  of  human  nature  and  incapable  of  devotion  to 
a  cause.  Lowell  was  made  in  a  later  and  larger  mould. 
His  heart  was  set  on  the  welfare  of  his  country,  and  so, 
scholar  and  Yankee  that  he  was,  he  gave  his  political  satire 
the  flavour  of  rustic  speech  and  jest,  as  only  one  could 
do  who  was  learned  in  antiquarian  lore  and  bred  in  the 
stronghold  of  the  New  England  spirit.  His  best  serious 
verse  was  The  Vision  of  Sir  Launfal  (1848),  a  mediaeval 
tale,  in  the  manner  of  Longfellow,  with  a  prelude  and 
interlude  which  are  accurately  descriptive  of  nature  in 
New  England,  and  the  noble  Commemoration  Ode  (1865) . 

184.  Poe. — We  now  leave  the  New  England  school 
of  poets,  passing  to  Poe,  who  was  the  only  writer  outside 


xn  POETRY   IN  THE   UNITED   STATES  319 

of  New  England  who  was  contemporary  with  them,  and 
to  later  poets.  Poe  published  thin  volumes  in  1827, 1829, 
and  1 83 1,  containing,  at  least  in  germ,  many  of  his  best 
poems ;  and  his  last  volume  of  collected  verse  appeared 
in  1845.  It  must  therefore  be  kept  in  mind  that  he  wrote 
before  any  of  the  preceding  writers,  except  Bryant,  had 
done  work  that  would  justify  their  present  reputation. 
Poe  had  closer  affinities  with  Coleridge,  Shelley,  and 
Keats  than  had  any  other  American  poet,  and  is  our  soli- 
tary figure  on  that  side  of  the  romantic  school.  He  ab- 
horred didacticism  in  verse,  and  loved  the  form  of  poetry 
which  by  rhythm  and  melody  appeals  exclusively  to  the 
imagination.  What  he  wrote  was  short,  exquisite  in  form, 
and  ethereal  in  matter,  the  artistic  expression  of  moods 
that  are  allied  to  madness, —  moods  in  which  death  con- 
quers all,  and  ghosts  and  demons  and  evil  harbingers  are 
on  every  hand.  This  unreal  world  he  sung  in  a  melody 
more  piercingly  sweet,  more  haunting,  more  mystically 
sad  and  terrible  than  that  of  any  other  American  poet, 
and  the  peculiarities  of  his  genius  and  of  his  art  have 
caused  him  rightly  to  be  hailed,  in  his  limited  field  of 
pure  fancy,  as  the  greatest  that  has  arisen  among  us. 

185.  Whitman  and  Later  Poets.  —  Emerson  had  de- 
clared that  men  must  look  into  their  own  hearts  and  on 
nature  for  inspiration  and  solace,  and  that  Americans 
must  find  the  stimulus  for  their  own  Uterature  in  their 
own  national  and  personal  experiences.  As  if  in  response 
to  his  call  and  his  example,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  and 
Whittier  were  doing,  in  the  sixth  decade  of  the  century, 


320  ENGLISH    LITERATURE  CHAJ. 

their  most  characteristic  work ;  and  in  the  same  decade 
appeared  a  thin  volume  entitled  Leaves  of  Grass  (1855), 
by  Walt  Whitman.  This,  with  succeeding  productions 
of  the  same  character,  have  been  much  read,  and,  espe- 
cially in  Europe,  have  been  thought  typical  of  the  ideas 
of  a  great  democracy.  Whitman's  manner  was  that  of 
the  rhapsodist,  who,  deeply  moved  and  despising  con- 
vention, uttered  his  thought  in  language  depending  largely 
for  its  effect  on  its  irregular  rhythm,  usually  without  the 
aid  of  rhyme.  Like  Whittier,  and  with  him  almost  alone 
among  our  poets.  Whitman  knew  the  life  of  the  people. 
But  it  was  the  old  New  England  farming  folk  with  which 
Whittier  was  familiar.  Whitman  knew  the  humbler  city 
folk,  —  firemen  and  drivers  and  mechanics,  more  typical 
even  than  farmers  of  the  men  whose  political  judgment  or 
caprice  determines  the  destinies  of  our  municipalities  or 
the  nation.  These  men,  as  symbols  of  democracy,  he 
idolised,  seeing  in  them  the  nobiUty  of  active  and  healthy 
life.  He  felt  himself  their  brother,  the  type  of  the  race. 
He  sang  of  them,  of  his  joy  in  comradeship  with  them,  of 
their  wondrous  diversity  of  toil,  of  a  commonwealth  based 
on  honest  living  and  plain  thinking,  of  the  joy  of  mere 
physical  existence,  of  the  great  panorama  of  nature  spread 
before  us,  of  national  ideals,  of  our  heroes.  His  song 
was  full  of  uncouth  words  and  rough  thoughts,  and  not 
free  from  affectation,  and  the  people  of  whom  he  wrote 
have  not  understood  him ;  but  others  have,  and  the 
grandeur  of  his  conception  and  the  majestic  sweep  of 
his  verse  entitle  him  to  a  place  among  our  poets. 


Zn  POETRY    IN    THE    UNITED    STATES  321 

Poe  died  young,  in  1849,  but  the  other  poets  mentioned 
in  this  chapter  Uved  singularly  long  and  happy  lives. 
Even  the  venerable  Bryant  lived  until  1878;  Longfellow 
and  Emerson,  until  1882;  Lowell,  until  1891 ;  Whittier 
and  Whitman,  until  1892  ;  and  Holmes,  until  1894.  The 
men  who  began  American  poetry  have,  then,  survived 
almost  until  the  end  of  the  century.  Of  these  men,  the 
New  England  poets  formed  a  group  by  themselves,  whose 
tendencies  and  habits  of  thought  give  our  verse  its  chief 
characteristics,  namely,  simplicity  and  a  love  for  the  di- 
dactic. In  the  first  respect  they  differ  greatly  from  the 
contemporary  English  school,  who,  from  Keats  to  Ten- 
nyson, have  depended  to  a  large  degree  on  the  exquisite 
finish  which  they  gave  to  their  verse.  In  the  second 
respect,  the  American  school  followed  the  lead  of  Words- 
worth. 

Whitman  may,  on  the  whole,  be  regarded  as  a  member 
of  the  New  England  school  in  spirit,  and  as  merely  push- 
ing to  an  extreme  the  methods  of  Emerson  and  Thoreau, 
though  it  must  be  confessed  that  it  is  easier  to  put  him 
in  a  class  by  himself.  At  all  events,  he  has  had  no 
prominent  disciples,  and  his  influence,  wherever  felt,  has 
served  merely  to  add  to  the  simplicity  of  our  verse  and 
its  disregard  of  the  more  intricate  conventions  of  form. 
Poe's  influence,  on  the  contrary,  has  led  towards  greater 
care  for  form  and  interest  in  the  craftsman's  side  of 
poetry.  The  influence  of  the  school  of  the  Pre-Raphael- 
ites,  which  would  have  worked  in  the  same  direction,  has 
scarcely  been  felt  in  America     Since  the  Civil  War  only 


322  ENGLISH   LITERATURE  CHAP.  XH 

two  tendencies  have  been  distinguishable  in  our  poetry. 
The  first  is  parallel  to  the  tendency  noted  in  the  novel 
and  short  story  (see  page  297),  namely,  towards  verse 
dealing  with  the  humours  and  peculiarities  of  life  in 
certain  localities,  usually  in  dialect,  the  best  example  of 
which  is  perhaps  to  be  found  in  the  poems  of  Bret 
Harte.  The  other  is  that  towards  craftsmanship,  best 
shown  in  the  verse  of  Sidney  Lanier,  poet  and  musician, 
the  intricate  melody  and  charm  of  whose  lyrics  and 
odes  make  him  the  only  other  poet  of  the  century  whom 
it  would  be  appropriate  to  mention  here. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE 


A.D. 
449. 

597- 
627  .    , 
635,  et  seq. 
664.     . 
670-80 
669-71 
68o?-709 
690  (cir.) 
674-82 

673-  • 
731  .  • 
735-    • 

766-82 

782-92 
793-    . 


800 
830 


IS 


English  History  begins  in  Britain.  The  Jutes  land 
in  Thanet. 

Christianity  brought  into  England  by  Augustine; 

And  into  Northumbria  by  Paulinus. 

The  Celtic  Missionaries  evangelise  Northumbria. 

The  Synod  of  Whitby. 

The  poems  of  Csedmon. 

School  of  Canterbury;   Archbishop  Theodore. 

The  literary  work  of  Ealdhelm.     (Born  656.) 

The  laws  of  Ine. 

Wearmouth,  Jarrow,  and  their  libraries,  founded  by 
Benedict  Biscop. 

Bseda,  Benedict's  scholar,  born. 

Bseda's  Ecclesiastical  History.  (Death  of  Bseda,  735.) 

Ecgberht,  Archbp.  of  York,  establishes  the  School 
of  York  and  the  Library.     (Died  766.) 

i^thelbert  and  Alcuin  make  York  the  centre  of 
European  learning. 

Alcuin  carries  the  learning  of  York  to  Europe. 

The  first  Viking  raid  on  Northumbria. 

Cynewulf  (born  about  720)  wrote  his  poems  prob- 
ably in  the  latter  half  of  this  century. 

Charles  the  Great  crowned  emperor. 

About  this  date  the  "  Heliand,"  an  Old  Saxon 
poem,  was  written. 

323 


324  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

A.D. 

867-76     .     .    The  final  destruction  of  the  seats  of  learning  in 

Northumbria  by  "  the  Army." 
57/  ....     The  accession  of  y^lfred. 
886  (cir.)      .    JSlittA.  begins  his   literary   work.      The   English 

Chronicle  is  first  carefully  edited  in  this  reign. 
901  .     .     .     .     Death  of  Alfred. 
913.     .     .     .     Rolf  settles  in  Normandy. 

937  ....     Song  of  Battle  of  Brunanburh,  in  the  Chronicle. 
961-88      .     .     Dunstan,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 
964,  */  seq.     .    King  Eadgar,  with  yEthclwold  and  Oswald,  Bishops 

of  Winchester  and  Worcester,  revives  English 

monachism  in  Wessex  and  East  Anglia. 
971  ....     Blickling  Homilies. 
991  ....     Song  of  the  Battle  of  Maldon. 
991-96      .     .    iElfric's  Homilies;   after  1005,  his  Treatise  on  the 

Old  and  New  Testament.      (Died  1020-25.) 
IO31     .     .     .     Swegen  of  Denmark  becomes  King  of  England. 
1042-65    .     .     Reign  of  Edward  the  Confessor.      England's  first 
y  contact  with  French  Romance. 

Latin  translation  of  a  late  Greek  Romance,  Apol- 

lonius  of  Tyre,  and  of  two  small  books  belonging 

to  the  Alexander  Saga. 
1066     .     .    .    The  Lay  of  Roland  is  brought  to  England. 
1066     .     .     .      William  I. 

1070  .     .     .     Lanfranc,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

The  "  Charlemagne,"  Norman  poem,  before  the  end 
of  the  nth  century. 

1071  .    .    .    The  Exeter  Book  given  by  Leofric,  Bishop  of  Exe- 

ter, to  his  Cathedral. 

1085     .     .     .    The  Domesday  Book. 

1087     .    .    .     William  II.  crowned  by  Lanfranc. 

1093     .     .     .     Anselm,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

1095  .  .  .  The  beginning  of  the  Crusades.  The  stories  of  the 
East  soon  come  to  the  West. 

XIOO     .     .     .     Henry  I. 

1 109  .  .  .  University  of  Paris  rises  into  importance  with  Wil- 
liam of  Champeaux  and  Peter  Abelard. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE 


32s 


A.D. 

mo  . 
1118  . 
1 120    . 

1126-43 
1 1 29  . 
"35-54 

"32-35 

"54     • 


'^S4    • 
"55 
1160 
1156-59? 
1160-70 
(cir.) 

1160-70 
1 170  . 
1 1 70-90 

1180-90? 


7i8g 
1 198 


Miracle  play  of  St.  Catherine. 

End  of  Florence  of  Worcester's  Chronicle. 

End  of  William  of  Malmesbury's  Historia  regum 
Anglorum. 

William  of  Malmesbury's  Historiae  novelise. 

End  of  Simeon  of  Durham's  Chronicle. 

Henry  of  Huntingdon's  History  of  England. 

Stephen. 

Geoffrey  of  Monmouth's  Historia  Britonum.  Final 
form,  1 147. 

English  Chronicle  ends. 

Gesta  Stephani.     Hexham  Chroniclers. 

At  the  end  of  reign  of  Henry  I.  and  during 

Stephen's   reign   the  Cistercians  brought  about  a 

religious   revival.      The  Abbeys  founded    in    the 

North. 

Henry  II. 

Wace's  Geste  des  Bretons  (Brut  d'Engleterre). 

Benoit  de  Sainte  More's  Roman  dc  Troie. 

John  of  Salisbury's  Polycraticus. 

Walter  Map's  De  Nugis  curialium;  Golias. 

The  Lais  of  Marie  de  France;  written  in  Eng- 
land. 

Robert  de  Boron's  Le  petit  Saint  Graal. 

Wace  finishes  his  Roman  de  Rou. 

Le  Grand  Saint  Graal;  Queste  de  Saint  Graal; 
Lancelot  du  Lac,  by  Walter  Map? 

Chrestien  de  Troye's  Conte  de  Graal  (Percevale). 

Chronicle  of  Benedict  of  Peterborough,  continued 
by  Roger  of  Howden. 

Ranulf  de  Glanvill's  work  on  English  law. 

Richard  Fitz  Nigel's  Dialogus  de  Scaccario. 

Gerald  de  Barri  (Giraldus  Cambrensis)  —  Itinera- 
rium;  Journey  in  Wales;  Conquest  of  Ireland  — 
written  in  this  and  the  two  following  reigns. 

Richard  I. 

William  of  Newborough's  Chronicle. 


326  ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

In  the  middle  of  the  1 2th  century  the  troubadour  poetry  of 
Southern  France  rose  into  its  fine  flower  in  the  work  of  Bernart 
de  Ventadorn.  He  had  been  preceded  by  Guilhem  de  Poitiers, 
the  first  troubadour  of  whom  we  know.  Bertrand  de  Born, 
Geoffrey  Rudel,  Pierre  Vidal  are  famous  troubadours  of  this  cen- 
tury. The  lyrics  of  Northern  France,  those  of  the  trouveres,  grew 
out  of  this  Provengal  poetry.  No  lyrical  poetry  in  England  in  this 
century.  The  chansons  de  geste  of  the  last  century  in  France 
were  largely  added  to  in  this.  Great  literary  activity  prevailed  in 
Wales  from  the  middle  of  this  century  down  to  the  death  of 
Llewellyn  in  1282.  The  epic  of  the  Cid  was  shaped  about  1160-70 
out  of  ballads  that  had  sung  the  border  battles  of  Moors  and 
Spaniards.  In  Germany  the  Minnelieder  arose  in  the  middle  of 
the  century,  and  Wolfram  von  Eschenbach  introduced  his  new 
conception  of  Parzival  into  the  Arthurian  legend.  Also  in  the 
middle  of  this  century  the  Niebelungen  Lied  was  cast  into  its  form. 
Itahan  poetry  began  with  CiuUo  d'Alcamo  in  Sicily,  and  Folca- 
chiero  of  Siena,  in  the  years  1172-78.  In  this  century  also  the 
mediaeval  tales  from  India  were  cast  into  the  History  of  the  Seven 
Sages,  and  into  the  Disciplina  Clericalis.  These  materials  were 
moulded  into  various  shapes  by  the  French  poets,  and  afterwards 
in  England. 

A.D. 

7/99     .     .    .    yohn. 

Chronicle  of  Richard  of  Devizes.  Annals  of  Barn- 
well. Chronicle  of  Jocelyn  of  Brakelond,  and 
others. 

1 150-1200     .     Sayings  of  Alfred. 

1200-30    .     .     Roman  de  la  Rose  (Part  I.)  by  Guillaume  de  Lorris. 

1205     .     .     .     Loss  of  Normandy. 

1205  (cir.)     .     Layamon's  Brut. 

1 21 5  .     .     .     The  Ormulum.     The  Great  Charter. 

1210-50    .     .     Reign  of  Frederick  II.     Italian  poetry  in  Sicily. 

1216  .     .     .    Henry  III. 

Chronicle  of  Roger  of  Wendover  at  St.  Albans. 
1235-73    •    •     Matthew    Paris'    Greater    Chronicle;     History    of 
England;   Lives  of  earlier  abbots. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE  32/ 

A.D. 

1220-76    .     .     Guido  Guinicelli.     Father  of  new  national  litera- 
ture in  Italy. 
1220  (cir.)     .     Owl  and  Nightingale  (Dorsetshire), 

1220  (cir.)     .     Ancren  Riwle  (Dorsetshire). 

1221  .     .     .     Coming  of  Black  Friars  to  England  (Dominicans). 

1224  .     .     .     Coming  of  Grey  Friars  (Franciscans). 

1225  ...     St.  Francis  of  Assisi's  Song  to  the  Sun. 
1225-35?.     .    The  Bestiary. 

1230-40  (cir.)    King  Horn. 

* 235-53    .     .     Robert    Grossetete    (Bp.    of    Lincoln).      Chastel 

d'amour. 
1250  (cir.)     .     Genesis  and  Exodus. 
1258     .     .     .     Provisions    of    Oxford,    Proclamation    of    King's 

adhesion  to  them —  in  English  as  well  as  French. 
1262     .     .     .     Miracle  plays  acted  by  the  Town  Guilds. 
1264     .     .     .     Battle  of  Lewes  —  Ballad. 

1264     .     .     .     Corpus  Christi  Day  appointed;  fully  observed,  131 1. 
1268     .     .     .     Roger  Bacon's  Opus  Majus. 

After  Lewes  and  its  war-ballad,  the  Love  Lyric  begins  in  such 
verse  as  the  Throstle  and  the  Nightingale  and  the  Cuckoo  Song. 
Also  the  religious  lyric  in  such  verse  as  the  Sorrows  of  Christ  and 
the  Lullaby,  and  the  Love  Song  of  Thomas  de  Hales,  a  Franciscan. 
Also  the  satirical  lyric,  such  as  the  Land  of  Cockayne.  In  this 
reign  Adam  Marsh  (De  Marisco)  has  a  famous  Franciscan  school 
at  Oxford.  The  Harrowing  of  Hell,  first  dramatic  piece  in  English, 
belongs  to  this  reign.  Northumbria  begins  again  to  write  in  second 
half  of  century. 

I2T2     .     .     .    Edward  I. 

The  Alexander  Romance  in  English  in  this  reign. 

The  Tristan  Story  is  also  widely  spread. 
Romances  arise  in  Northumbria.    Many  war-ballads. 
1280-87     •     •     Guido  delle  Colonne's  (a  poet  of  Sicily,  born  1250) 
Historia  Destructionis  Trojge.     Visited  England 
and  wrote  Historia  de  regibus  et  rebus  Anglise. 
1290-93    .     .     Dante's  Vita  Nuova. 
1300  (cir.)     .     Gesta  Romanorum. 


328 


A.D. 

1300  (cir.) 
1303     •     • 

1300-05 
1307  . 
1303-21 
1324  . 
1320-30 


1327 
1330 


1340  (cir.) 

1340  .     . 

1341  .     . 

1345     •    • 

1333-52    • 
1350,  etseq. 

1350-53    • 
1350  (cir.) 


1355  •  •  • 
135s  (cir.)  . 
1360-70  (cir.) 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Havelok  the  Dane. 

Robert  Manning  of  Brunne's  Handlyng  Synne. 
His  Chronicle  finished  1338. 

Roman  dc  la  Rose  (Part  IL),  by  Jean  de  Meung. 

Edward  II. 

Dante's  Divine  Comedy. 

Court  of  Love  at  Toulouse. 

Cursor  Mundi  (Northumbrian).  William  Shore- 
ham's  Poems  (Kentish).  A  Cycle  of  Homilies, 
Legend  Cycle  (both  Northumbrian)  are  now 
worked  at.  Sir  Tristrem;  Sire  Otuel;  Guy  of 
Warwick;  Bevis  of  Hampton;  all  now  in  English. 

Edward  III. 

Pilgrimage  of  Human  Life,  a  French  poem  by 
Guillaume  de  Delguileville.  Legenda  Aurea, 
by  Jacobus  a  Voragine,  Bishop  of  Genoa. 

Guillaume  de  Machault.(B.  I282(cir.);  d.  i37o(cir.).) 

Richard  RoUe  of  Hampole's  Pricke  of  Conscience. 

Dan  Michel  of  Northgate's  Ayenbite  of  Inwyt. 

Petrarca  crowned  laureate  at  Rome. 

Death  of  Richard  Aungerville,  Bishop  of  Durham, 
writer  of  Philobiblion ;   leaves  library  to  Oxford. 

Songs  of  Laurence  Minot  on  King  Edward's  wars. 

Collections  of  books,  and  University  foundations  in 
England  now  begin  to  serve  literature. 

Decameron  of  Boccaccio.  1341,  LaTeseide.  1348, 
Filostrato. 

Romances  are  now  written  on  the  Welsh  marches 
in  alliterative  Old  English  verse ;  subject  and 
mise-en-scene  French,  verse  and  diction  national. 
Among  first  of  these,  Joseph  of  Arimathie  and 
two  fragments  of  an  Alexander  Romance. 

William  of  Palerne.     1350?  Tale  of  Gamelyn. 

Anturs  of  Arthur  at  the  Tarnawathelan. 

Sir  Gawayne  and  the  Grene  \  Perhaps  by  the 
Knight,  Pearl,  Cleanness  >-  "philosophical 
and  Patience.  J      Strode." 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


329 


A.D. 

1362-63 
1366-70 
1373 

»37S 

1377 

1377 

1378? 

1379 

1380  . 
1380-83 
1382-85 


1383  (cir.) 
1385-89    . 


»393? 
1395 


1398? 


Langland's  Vision  of  Piers  the  Plowman.  (A-Text.) 

Chaucer's  first  poems.     Book  of  the  Duchess,  1369. 

Petrarca's  Griselda. 

Barbour's  Bruce. 

Richard  II. 

B-Text  of  Piers  the  Plowman. 

Wyclif  s  Summa  in  Theologia. 

New  College,  Oxford;  Latin  School  at  Winchester 

founded  by  William  of  Wykeham. 
Wyclif  s  translation  of  the  Bible. 
Chaucer's  Troilus  and  Cressida. 
Chaucer's   Parlement  of  Foules,   Hous   of  Fame, 

Legend  of  Good  Women. 
Wyclif's  Trialogus.     (Died  1384.) 
Chaucer's  Prologue  and  many  of  the  Canterbury 

Tales. 
Gower's  Confessio  Amantis. 
Chrysoloras  comes  to  Florence  to  teach  Greek. 
Guarino  Guarini  teaches  Greek  at  Venice,  Florence, 

Ferrara.     (Born  1370;  died  1460.) 
C-Tcxt  of  Piers  the  Plowman. 


From  Boccaccio  to  the  middle  of  the  i6th  century  a  great  mass  of 
Italian  Novelle  were  produced;  used  in  England  for  plays,  stories,  &c. 


1399  • 

1400  . 
1411-12 

Jt4^3     • 
1415     . 

1421  . 

1422  . 
1422     . 

1422  . 

1423  • 

1424-25 


Henry  IV. 

Death  of  Chaucer  and  Langland. 

Hoccleve's  Gouvernail  of  Princes. 

Henry  V. 

Eustache    Deschamps   dies.      Alain   Chartier   and 

Christine  de  Pisan,  his  contemporaries. 
Lydgate's  Troy  Book.     1424-25,  Story  of  Thebes. 
Henry  VI. 

James  I.  of  Scotland :  The  King's  Quair. 
Paston  Letters  begin ;   end  1 509. 
John  Aurispa  brings  from  Greece  to  Italy  more  than 

200  MSS. 
Lydgate's  Falles  of  Princes. 


330 

A.D. 
1427 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

.    Filelfo,  laden  with  MSS.,  returns  from  Greece  to 
Florence, 


Pletho,  Bessarion,  Gaza  have  diffused  the  spirit  of  ancient  learn- 
ing in  Italy  by  1440.  Universities  at  Pavia,  Turin,  Ferrara,  Flor- 
ence, &c.  Eight  hundred  MSS.  left  by  Niccolo  Niccoli  to  Florence, 
in  1436;  cradle  of  the  Laurentian  Library. 


1449  . 

1453  • 

1450  (cir.) 
1460-80 
1461  . 
1470  . 
1474-76 
148 1  . 
1483  . 
j^Ss  . 
1495?  • 
1501  . 

1503  • 

1504  . 

1506  . 

1507  . 

1507-08 
1509  . 
1509  . 
1513  . 
1513?  • 

1515  . 

1516  . 
1516  . 
1518?  . 

1518?  . 


Pecock's  Repressor  of  Overmuch  blaming  of  the 

Clergy. 
Fall  of  Constantinople. 
Invention  of  Printing. 
Poems  of  Robert  Henryson. 
Edward  IV. 
Malory's  Morte  Darthur. 
Caxton  sets  up  printing  press  at  Westminster. 
Luigi  Pulci's  Morgante  Maggiore. 
Edward  V.    Richard  II J. 
Henry  VII. 

Boiardo's  Orlando  Inamorato  begun. 
Gawin  Douglas'  Palace  of  Honour. 
Dunbar's  Thistle  and  Rose. 
Sannazaro's  Arcadia. 
Hawes'  Pastime  of  Pleasure. 
Skelton's    Bowge    of    Court;     Boke    of    Phyllip 

Sparowe. 
Dunbar's  Dance  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins. 
Henry  VIII. 
Erasmus :  Praise  of  Folly. 
Gawin  Douglas :  Translation  of  the  ^neid. 
Sir  Thos.  More's  Life  of  Edward  V.  and  History 

of  Richard  III.  written. 
Trissino's  Sofonisba;    first  use  of  blank  verse  in 

Italy. 
Ariosto's  Orlando  Furioso  begun;  the  rest  in  1532. 
Sir  Thos.  More's  Utopia,  written  in  Latin. 
Skelton's  Colin  Clout. 
Amadis  de  Gaul  translated  into  English. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE 


331 


A.D. 

1524       . 

1527  . 

1528  . 
1520-40 

1535 
1540 
1541? 

1545 

1547 

1549 

1549-52 

»55i 

'553 
1553 
1557 
'558 
1559 
1561-62 

1562  . 

1563 
1563 
1570 
1571 

1575 
1576 


1576 

1576 
1577 


Ronsard  born.     (Died  1586.) 

Tyndale's  translation  of  the  New  Testament. 

Lyndsay's  Dreme, 

Heywood's  Interludes. 

Rabelais'  Gargantua,  &c. 

Lyndsay's  Satire  of  the  Three  Estates. 

Cranmer's  Bible. 

Ralph  Roister  Doister,  first  English  comedy,  printed 
1566. 

Ascham's  Toxophilus. 

Edward  VI. 

Latimer's  Sermon  on  the  Ploughert. 

English  Prayer  Book. 

Ralph  Robinson's  translation  of  Mote's  Utopia  into 
English. 

Mary. 

Lyndsay's  Monarchic. 

Tottel's  Miscellany ;  poems  by  Wyatt  and  Surrey. 

Elizabeth. 

Sackville's  Mirror  for  Magistrates. 

Gorboduc,  the  first  English  Tragedy.  Printed  as 
Ferrex  and  Porrex,  1571. 

Phaer's  Virgil.  Many  other  translations  of  the 
classics  before  1579. 

Foxe's  Book  of  Martyrs. 

Sackville's  Induction  to  Mirror  for  Magistrates. 

Ascham's  Scholemaster. 

R.  Edward's  Damon  and  Pithias  printed. 

Comedy  of  Gammer  Gurton's  Needle  printed.  Play 
of  Apius  and  Virginia  printed. 

Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices;  1578,  Gorgeous  Gal- 
lery of  Gallant  Inventions;  1584,  HandfuU  of 
Pleasant  Delights  —  all  Poetical  Miscellanies. 

Three  theatres  built  in  London  ;  Blackfriars,  the 
Curtain,  the  Theatre. 

Gascoigne's  Steele  Glas.     (First  verse  satire.) 

Holinshed's  Chronicle. 


332  ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

A.D. 

1579-80    .  .  Lyly's  Euphues.     1580-1601  (cir.)  his  dramas. 

1579     .     .  .  Spenser's  Shepheards  Calendar. 

1579     .     .  .  North's  Plutarch's  Lives. 

1580-81    .  .  Sidney's  Arcadia  and  Apologie  for  Poetrie. 

1580-88    .  .  Montaigne's  Essaies. 

1 58 1     .     .  .  Tasso's  Gerusalemme  Liberata. 

1582?  .     .  .  Watson's  Hecatompathia  or  Passionate  Century. 

1 583-1 625?  .  Pamphleteers:   Greene,  Lodge,  G.  Harvey,  Nash, 

Dekker,  Breton, 

1584-92    .  .  Dramas  of  Greene.     1583,  ^/j^;.,  Tales  in  prose. 

1584-98    .  .  Dramas  of  Peele. 

1586  .    .  .  Warner's  Albion's  England. 

1587  .     .  .  Marlowe's  Tamburlaine  acted.     (Printed  1 590.) 
1588-90    .  .  Marlowe's  Faustus,  Jew  of  Malta,  Edward  II. 

1 588-90    .  .  Series  of  Martin  Marprelate  Tracts. 

1588-90?  .  .  Love's  Labour's  Lost. 

1589  ,    .  .  Hakluyt's  Voyages. 

1590  .    .  .  Spenser's  Faerie  Queene  (Books  i.-iii.  1596,  iv.-vi.). 

1591  .    .  .  Harrington's  translation  of  Ariosto's  Orlando. 
1593     .    .  •  Donne's  Satires  (died  1626). 

1593  .    •  .  Shakespeare's  Venus  and  Adonis. 

1594  .     .  .  Hooker's  Ecclesiastical  Polity  (Bks.  i.-iv.  1597,  v.). 
1593-96    .  .  Many  collections  of  Sonnets. 

1595  .    .  .  Daniel's  Hist,  of  Civil  Wars  of  York  and  Lancaster. 
1596,  «/j^.  .  Ben  Jonson's  Dramas.     (Died  1 637.) 

1594-96   .  .  Merchant  of  Venice. 

1597  .     .  .  Bacon's  Essays.     (First  set.) 
1597-98    .  .  Hall's  Satires. 

1598  .    .  .  Chapman's  Homer  (First  part).    Sylvester's  trans- 

lation of  Du  Bartas. 

1598-99    •  •  Marston's  Satires. 

1596-98   .  .  Drayton's  Barons'   Wars  and  England's  Heroical 
Epistles. 

1599  .     .  .  The  Globe  Theatre  built. 

1600  .    .  .  England's   Helicon;   England's   Parnassus;    Belve- 

dere; all  poetical  Miscellanies. 

1600     .    .  .  Fairfax's  translation  of  Tasso. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE 


333 


A.O. 
1600       . 

i6oo-8i 


1603  (cirO 

?  . 

1603  .  .  . 

1603     . 

1603  . 

1604  . 

1605  . 

1606-16 

1609  . 

1610-25  (<^ 

ir.) 

i6io  . 

1611  . 

1612  . 

1612-20 

1613-14 

1613-16 

1613  . 

1613 

1613 

1614 

1615 

1615 

1616 

1621 

1622 

1623 

1623 

1623 

Lope  de  Vega  began  his  dramas  about  1590,  and 
continued  writing  till  his  death  in  1635, 

Calderon,  who  had  a  large  influence  on  the  French 
Drama  of  the  17th  and  1 8th  centuries,  on  the 
English  Restoration  Drama,  and  on  the  Italian, 
German  and  English  poetry  of  18th  and  19th 
centuries. 

The  Return  from  Parnassus. 

Florio's  translation  of  Montaigne's  Essays. 

yames  I. 

KnoUes'  History  of  the  Turks. 

Authorised  Version  of  the  Bible. 

Bacon's  Advancement  of  Learning  (Books  i.  and  ii.). 

Cervantes'  Don  Quixote. 

Shakespeare's  Sonnets  published. 

Dramas  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 

Giles  Fletcher's  Christ's  Victory. 

Speed's  History  of  Great  Britain. 

Webster's  first  drama,  The  White  Devil  (printed). 

T.  Shelton's  Translation  of  Don  Quixote. 

Drayton's  Polyolbion. 

Browne's  Britannia's  Pastorals;  1614,  The  Shep- 
herd's Pipe. 

Purchas  his  Pilgrimage. 

Wither's  Abuses  Stript  and  Whipt. 

Drummond  of  Hawthornden's  first  poem.  (D.  1649.) 

Raleigh's  History  of  the  World. 

Sandys'  Travels. 

Wither's  Shepherd's  Hunting. 

Chapman's  Homer  finished.     Shakespeare  dies. 

Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy. 

Massinger's  Virgin  Martyr.     (Died  1639.) 

Webster's  Duchess  of  Malfi  (printed). 

Waller's  first  poems. 

The  "  First  Folio  "  of  Shakespeare. 

Chapman,  Tourneur,  Middleton,  and  other  drama- 
tists wrote  during  this  reign. 


334  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

A.D. 

162^     .  .  .  Charles  I. 

1628  .  .  .  Harvey's  De  Motu  Sanguinis. 

1629  .  .  .  Milton's  Ode  on  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity. 
1631      .  .  .  George  Herbert's  Temple. 

1635?  .  .  .  Sir  Thos.  Browne's  Religio  Medici  (pub.  1642). 

1632-37  .  .  Milton's  Allegro,  Penseroso,  Comus,  Lycidas. 

1633  .  .  .  Phineas  Fletcher's  Purple  Island. 

1634  .  .  .  Ford's  historical  play  of  Perkin  Warbeck. 

1636     .  .  .  Corneille's  first  tragedy,  the  Cid.   His  last  play,  1 675. 

1636     .  .  .  French  Academy  founded. 

1640  .  .  .  Thomas  Carew's  poems. 

1 641  .  .  .  Milton's  first  pamphlet. 

1641  .  .  .  Evelyn's  Diary  begins  (ends  1697;  published  1818). 

1642  .  .  .  Theatres  closed. 

1642     .  .  .  Fuller's  Holy  and  Profane  state. 

1642     .  .  .  Denham's  Cooper's  Hill. 

1642     .  .  .  Hobbes'  De  Cive. 

1644  .  .  .  Milton's  Areopagitica. 

1645  •  •  •  Waller's  poems. 

1645  •  •  •  Meetings  held  which  lead   to  formation   of   the 

Royal  Society. 

1646  .  .  .  Crashaw's  Steps  to  the  Temple. 

1647  .  .  .  Jeremy  Taylor's  Liberty  of  Prophesying. 

1647  .  .  .  Cowley's  Mistress.     Davideis,  i64i(?). 
1647-48  .  .  Herrick's  Noble  Numbers;   Hesperides. 

1648  ...  J.  Beaumont's  Psyche  or  Love's  Mystery. 

1648  .  .  .  Suckling's  Fragmenta  Aurea. 

1649  .  .  .  Lovelace's  Lucasta. 
/6^9     .  .  .  Commonwealth. 

1650  .  .  .  Baxter's  Saints'  Rest. 

1650  .  .  .  Milton's  Defensio  pro  Populo  Anglicano. 
1650-52  .  .  Marvell's  Garden  poems  written. 
1650-56  .  .  Vaughan's  Silex  Scintillans. 

1650-57  .  .  Pascal's  Provincial  Letters. 

1 65 1  .  .  .  Hobbes'  Leviathan. 

1653     .  .  .  Izaak  Walton's  Compleat  Angler. 

1653     .  .  .  Moliere's  first  play. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE 


33! 


A.D. 

1656     .     .     .  Harrington's  Oceana. 

1659     .     .     .  Dryden's  Stanzas  on  the  Death  of  Cromwell. 

1659  .     .     .  Corneille's  Essay  on  the  Three  Unities. 

1659-60    .     .  Pepys' Diary  begins  (finished  1669;  published  1825). 

1660  .     .    .  Boileau's  first  satire. 
ibbo     .     .     .  Charles  II. 

1660     .    .    .  Re-opening    of   the    theatres    by  Davenant    and 
Killigrew. 

1662  .     .     .  Royal  Society  incorporated. 

1663  .     .     .  Dryden's  first  play,  the  Wild  Gallant. 
1663     .     .     .  Butler's  Hudibras  (Part  I.). 

1663     .     .     .  Algernon  Sidney's  Discourses  concerning  Govern- 
ment, published  1698. 

1663  .     .     .  The  London  Public  Intelligencer.     (Becomes  the 

London  Gazette,  1666.) 

1663-67    .     .  Playsof  Racine.  Esther,  1689  (?),Athalie,  i69o(?). 

1664  ...  La  Fontaine's  first  book  of  Contes. 

1667     .     .     .  Dryden's  Annus  Mirabilis;  Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesy. 

1667     .     .     .  Cowley's  Essays. 

1667     .     .     .  Milton's  Paradise  Lost. 

1667  .     .     .  Petty 's  Treatise  on  Taxes. 

1668  .     .     .  La  Fontaine's  first  book  of  Fables.     (Died  1695.) 
1670     .     .     .  Izaak  Walton's  Lives. 

1670  .     .     .  Pascal's  Les  Pensees. 

1671  .     .     .  Paradise  Regained.     Samson  Agonistes. 
1671-77    .     .  Dramas  of  Wycherley. 

1672  .     .     .  Dryden's  Essay  on  Heroic  Plays. 
1674     .     .     .  Boileau's  Art  of  Poetry. 

1678     .     .     .  Bunyan's  Pilgrim's  Progress.     (Part  L) 

1678     .     .     .  Dryden's  All  for  Love.     (In  blank  verse.) 

1678     .     .     .  Cud  worth's  Intellectual  System  of  the  Universe. 

1680  .     .     .  Filmer's  Patriarcha. 

1 68 1  .     .     .  Dryden's  Absalom  and  Achitophel.     (First  part.) 

1682  ...  Dryden's  Medal,  MacFlecknoe,  Religio  Laici. 
1684     .    .     .  Pilgrim's  Progress.     (Part  II,) 

Clarendon's  History  of  the  Great  Rebellion  written 
during  this  reign.     (Published  1707.) 


336  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

A.D. 

ib8^    .    .  .  James  II. 

1687     .    .  .  Newton's  Principia, 

1687    .     .  .  Defoe's  first  tract. 

1687     ...  La  Bruy^re's  Les  CaractSres. 

i688-8g   .  .  The  Revolution.     William  III. 

1690    .    .  .  Locke's  Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding. 

1692    ...  Sir  Wm.  Temple's  Miscellanea,  Vol.  ii. 

1693— 1700  .  Congreve's  dramas. 

1694     .     .  .  Dryden's  Last  Play. 

1 69  7-1 705  .  Dramas  of  Vanbrugh. 

1698     ,    .  .  Collier's  Short  View  of  the  Immorality  of  the  Stage. 

1 698-1 707  .  Dramas  of  Farquhar. 

17CX)     .     .  .  Dryden's  Fables.      (Nov.  1699.) 

17CX)    .    .  .  Prior's  Carmen  Seculare. 

j'/02    ,    ,  .  Anne. 

1702    .    .  .  Mather's  Magnalia  Christi  Americana. 

1702-05  .  .  Steele's  Plays.  (1722.  Comedy  of  the  Conscious 
Lovers,  his  last  play.) 

1704  .  .  .  Swift's  Tale  of  a  Tub,  Battle  of  the  Books.  (Writ- 
ten by  1596-97O 

1704    .    .  .  Addison's  Campaign.     Rosamond  (opera),  1706. 

1704-13    .  .  Defoe's  Review. 

1709    .    .  .  Mat  Prior's  Poems. 

1 709-1 1    .  .  TheTatler. 

1 709-44   .  .  Writings  of  Bishop  Berkeley. 

1709     .     .  .  Pope's  Pastorals.     (Written  1 704-05.) 

1711-12-14  .  The  Spectator. 

1712  .     .  .  Pope's  Rape  of  the  Lock.     (Final  form  1 7 14.) 

1 713  .     .  .  Addison's  Cato. 

1 714  .    .  .  Gay's  Shepherd's  Week. 
1714    .     .  .  George  I. 

1715-20    .  .  Pope's  Homer's  Iliad. 

1715,  et  seq. .  Le  Sage's  Gil  Bias. 

1 719    .     .  .  Defoe's  Robinson  Crusoe.     1720-25,  Other  novels. 

1724—34    .  .  Bp.  Burnet's  History  of  my  own  Times  published. 

1725     .     .  .  Allan  Ramsay's  Gentle  Shepherd.  (First  form  1723.^ 

1726-30   .  .  Thomson's  Seasons. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE 


337 


XD. 

1726-27 
1727      . 

1727  . 

1728  . 
1728  . 
1730  . 
1732-34 
1732-48 

1735  • 

1736  . 

1737  . 

1738  . 

1739  . 

1740  . 

1 741  . 

1740-41 

1742  . 
1742-69 
1744  . 
1744  . 
1746  . 
1748  . 
1748   . 

1748  . 

1749  . 
1749   . 

1750-52 
1751-52 
1754   . 

1754  . 
1754-61 

1755  . 

1756  . 

1757  • 

1758  . 


Swift's  Gulliver's  Travels. 
George  IT. 

Gay's  Fables.     1728,  Beggar's  Opera. 
Pope's  Dunciad.  (First  form.  Others  in  1729-42-43.) 
Voltaire's  Henriade. 

Marivaux:  Lejeudel'amour  etduhasard.  (D.  1763.) 
Pope's  Essay  on  Man.     Moral  Essays,  1732-35. 
Franklin's  Poor  Richard's  Almanac. 
Johnson's  Translation  of  Lobo's  Voyage  to  Abys- 
sinia.    (His  first  work.) 
Butler's  Analogy  of  Religion. 
Shenstone's  Schoolmistress.     (Final  form,  1742.) 
Johnson's  London. 
Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature. 
Richardson's  Pamela.     1748,  Clarissa  Harlowe, 
Warburton's  Divine  Legation. 
Hume's  Essays. 

Fielding's  Joseph  Andrews.     1749,  Tom  Jones. 
Gray's  Poems.     (Collected  edition  1768.) 
Johnson's  Life  of  Savage. 
Akenside's  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination. 
Collins'  Odes. 

Smollett's  Roderick  Random. 
Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence. 
Montesquieu's  Esprit  des  Lois. 
Diderot's  Encyclopedic  begun. 
Johnson's  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes;  Irene. 
Johnson's  Rambler. 

Hume's  Principles  of  Morals  and  Political  Discourses. 
Richardson's  Sir  Chas.  Grandison. 
Edwards'  Freedom  of  the  Will. 
Hume's  History  of  England. 
Johnson's  Dictionary. 

Burke's  Essay  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful;  Vin- 
dication of  Natural  Society. 
Hume's  Natural  History  of  Religion. 
Robertson's  History  of  Scotland.     1769,  Charles  V. 


338 

A.D. 

1758  . 

1759  • 
1759    . 

1759  • 
I7S9-90 
I'jbo    . 

1760  . 
1760  . 
1760-65 
1761-64 
1762  . 
1764-70 
1765  • 
1765    • 

1765  . 

1766  . 
1766  . 
1768-78 

1769  . 
1769-73 

1770  . 
1770  . 
1771-74 

1773  • 

1774  . 

1774  • 

1775  • 

1775  • 

1776  . 

zr76    . 

1776  . 
1777-81 
1776-88 

1777  . 

1778  . 
1779-81 
1781    . 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Lessing's  Litteraturbriefe. 

Johnson's  Rasselas. 

Adam  Smith's  Moral  Sentiments. 

Sterne's  Tristram  Shandy.     (Vols.  I  and  2.) 

Sir  Joshua  Reynolds'  Discourses  on  Art. 

George  III. 

Rousseau's  Nouvelle  Helolse. 

Sterne's  Tristram  Shandy.     (2  vols.;  finished  1765.) 

Macpherson's  Ossian. 

Poems  of  Churchill. 

Falconer's  Shipwreck. 

Chatterton's  Poems. 

Goldsmith's  Traveller. 

Bishop  Percy's  Reliques  of  English  Poetry. 

H.  Walpole's  Castle  of  Otranto. 

Goldsmith's  Vicar  of  Wakefield.     (Written  1762  ?) 

Lessing's  Laokoon. 

Plays  of  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan. 

Burke's  Present  State  of  the  Nation. 

Letters  of  Junius. 

Burke's  Thoughts  on  the  Present  Discontents. 

Goldsmith's  Deserted  Village. 

Beattie's  Minstrel. 

Ferguson's  Poems. 

Burke's  Speech  on  American  Taxation. 

Goethe's  Werther. 

Beaumarchais :  Le  Mariage  de  Figaro. 

Burke's  Speech  on  Conciliation  with  America. 

Adam  Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations. 

Declaration  of  Independence. 

Paine's  Common  Sense. 

T.  Warton's  History  of  English  Poetry. 

Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

Robertson's  History  of  America. 

Frances  Burney's  Evelina. 

Johnson's  English  Poets. 

Schiller's  Die  Rauber. 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE 


339 


A.I>. 

1783    .  .    .  Crabbe's  Village. 

1783    .  .    .  Blake's  Poetical  Sketches. 

1785  .  .    .  Cowper's  Task. 

1786  .  .    .  Samuel  Rogers'  Poems. 
1786    .  .     .  Burns'  first  Poems. 

1789    .  .    .  Blake's    Songs    of   Innocence.      X794,    Songs    of 
Experience. 

1789  .  .    .  White's  Natural  History  of  Selborne. 

1790  .  .     .  Burke's  Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France. 
1791-92  .     .  Paine's  Rights  of  Man.     1 794-95,  Age  of  Reason. 

1 79 1  .  .    .  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson. 
1792-94  .    .  Arthur  Young's  Travels  in  France. 

1793     .  •     .  Godwin's  Enquiry  concerning  Political  Justice. 

1793  .  •     •  Wordsworth's  Evening  Walk ;  Descriptive  Sketches. 

1794  .  .    .  Coleridge  and  Southey's  Fall  of  Robespierre. 
1796     .  .     .  Poems;  by  Coleridge  and  Lamb. 

1796  .  .     .  Scott's  translation  of  Burger's  Lenore. 
1796-97  .    .  Burke's  Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace. 

1 797  .  .    .  Poems  by  Coleridge,  Lamb,  and  Lloyd. 

1797  .  .     .  Poetry  of  the  Anti- Jacobin. 

1798  .  .  .  Lyrical  Ballads;  by  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth. 
1798  .  .  .  Malthus' Essay  on  the  Principles  of  Population. 
1798    .  .    .  Landor's  Gebir  and  other  Poems. 

1798  .  .     .  Ebenezer  Elliott's  Vernal  Walk. 

1799  .  .    .  Scott's  translation  of  Gotz  von  Berlichingen. 

1799  .  .    .  Campbell's  Pleasures  of  Hope. 

1800  .  .    .  Coleridge's  translation  of  Schiller's  Wallenstein. 
l8oi     .  .    .  Southey's  Thalaba.  (He  continued  writing  till  1843.) 
1802    .  .    .  Scott's  Border  Minstrelsy. 

1802    .  .    .  The  Edinburgh  Review. 

1805     .  .    .     Scott's  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel. 

1807     .  .     .  Byron's  Hours  of  Idleness. 

1807     .  .     .  Wordsworth's  Poems  in  2  vols. 

1807  .  .     .  T.  Moore's  Irish  Melodies  begun. 
1807-08  .    .  Lamb's  Specimens  of  Dramatic  Poetry. 

1808  .  .    .  Scott's  Marmion.     1810,  Lady  of  the  Lake. 

1809  .  ,    ,  The  Quarterly  Review. 


340  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

A.D. 

1809  .  .  .  Byron's  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers. 

1810  .  .  .  Allan  Cunningham's  first  published  poems.  (D.I 842.) 
i8ll-i8  .  .  Novels  of  Jane  Austen. 

i8i2-i8  .  .  Byron's  Childe  Harold. 

1813  .  .  .  Shelley's  Queen  Mab.     1816,  Alastor. 

1814  .  .  .  Scott's  Waverley.     (His  novels  continue  till  1831.) 
1814     •  •  .  Wordsworth's  Excursion. 

1814     .  .  .  H.  Gary's  Translation  of  Dante. 

1816  .  .  .  Coleridge's  Christabel ;  Kubla  Khan. 
1816?  .  .  .  Leigh  Hunt's  Story  of  Rimini. 

1817  .  .  .  Byron's  Manfred.  i8i8,Beppo;  1819-23,  Don  Juan. 
18 1 7     .  .  .  Coleridge's  Biographia  Literaria. 

181 7     .  .  .  Keats'  first  poems. 

1 81 7  .  .  .  Bryant's  Thanatopsis. 

i%\'j,etseq.  .  Hazlitt's  Dramatic  and  Poetical  Criticisms.     (Died 
1830.) 

1818  .  .  .  Hallam's  View  of  the  State  of  Europe  during  the  Mid- 

dle Ages.  1827,  Constitutional  Hist,  of  England. 

1819  .  .  .  Irving's  The  Sketch-Book. 
j8ao     .  .  .  George  IV. 

1820  .  .  .  Keats'  Hyperion  and  other  Poems. 

1820  .  .  .  Shelley's  Prometheus  Unbound. 

1 82 1  •  .  .  Byron's  Cain  and  other  dramas. 

1821     .  .  .  DeQuincey's  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium  Eater. 

1821     .  .  .  Shelley's  Adonals  and  Epipsychidion. 

1 82 1  .  .  .  Cooper's  The  Spy. 
1821-23  .  .  Lamb's  Essays  of  Elia. 

1822  .  .  .  T.  L.  Beddoes'  Bride's  Tragedy. 
1822     .  .  .  Rogers'  Italy. 

1822-33  •  •  Prof.  Wilson's  Noctes  Ambrosianse.  (In  Blackwood.) 

1824  .  .  .  Carlyle's  translation  of  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister. 

1825  .  .  •  Macaulay's  Essay  on  Milton. 

1826  .  .  .  Poems  by  Two  Brothers.  (Ghas.  and  Alfd.  Tennyson.) 

1827  .  .  .  Disraeli's  Vivian  Gray. 
1827  .  .  .  Keble's  Christian  Year. 
1827     .  .  .  Bulwer  Lytton's  Pelham. 

1827     .  .  .  Poe's  Tamerlane  and  other  Poems. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


341 


A.D. 

1830  .  .  .  William  IV. 

1830  .  .  .  Alfred  Tennyson :  Poems. 

1830  .  .  .  Moore's  Life  of  Byron. 

1830  ,  .  .  Mrs.  Hemans' Songs  of  the  Affections. 
l^'})\,  et  seq.  .  Ebenezer  Elliott's  Corn  Law  Rhymes. 

1831  .  .  .  Robert  Browning's  Pauline;  published  1833. 

1832  .  .  .  Death  of  Sir  Walter  Scott.     Death  of  Goethe. 
1834  .  .  .  Carlylc's  Sartor  Resartus. 

1836  .  .  .  Dickens'  Pickwick. 

1836  .  .  .  Emerson's  Nature. 

1836  .  .  .  Holmes'  Poems. 
i8jy  .  .  .  Victoria. 

1837  .  .  .  Carlyle's  French  Revolution. 

1837  .  .  .  Hawthorne's  Twice-Told  Tales. 

1838  .  .  .  Whittier's  Poems. 

1838  .  .  .  Poe's  Narrative  of  Arthur  Gordon  Pjmi. 

1839  .  .  .  Longfellow's  Voices  of  the  Night. 

1 841  .  .  .  Newman's  Tracts  for  the  Times,  No.  xc. 

1842  .  .  .  Browning's  Dramatic  Lyrics. 

1843  •  •  •  Ruskin's  Modern  Painters.     (Vol.  I.) 

1847  .  •  .  C.  Bronte's  Jane  Eyre. 

1848  .  .  .  Arnold's  Strayed  Reveller  and  other  Poems. 
1848  .  .  .  Macaulay's  History  of  England.     (Vol.  I.) 
1848  .  .  .  Thackeray's  Vanity  Fair. 

1848  .  .  .  Lowell's  Biglow  Papers  (first  series) . 

1848  .  .  .  Thoreau's  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimac 

Rivers. 

1849  .  .  .  Parkman's  California  and  Oregon  Trail. 

1850  .  .  .  Mrs.  Browning's  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese. 
1850  .  .  .  Tennyson's  In  Memoriam. 

1852  .  .  .  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin. 

1855  .  .  .  Whitman's  Leaves  of  Grass. 

1856  .  .  .  Froude's  History  of  England.     (Vol.  I.) 
1856  .  .  .  Motley's  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic. 
1858  .  .  .  George  Eliot's  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life. 

1858  .  .  .  Morris' Defence  of  Guinevere  and  other  Poems. 

1858  .  .  .  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  King. 


342  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

A.D. 

1858  .  .  .  Holmes'  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table. 

1858  .  .  .  Fitzgerald's  Translation  of  Omar  Khayyam. 

1859  .  .  .  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species. 
1859  .  .  .  Mill's  On  Liberty. 

1862  .  .  .  Spencer's  First  Principles. 

1863  .  .  .  Huxley's  Man's  Place  in  Nature. 

1864  .  .  .  Lowell's  Fireside  Travels. 

1865  .  .  .  Meredith's  Rhoda  Fleming. 

1865  ...  Arnold's  Essays  in  Criticism  (first  series). 

1866  .  .  .  Swinburne's  Poems  and  Ballads. 
1866  .  .  .  Whittier's  Snow-Bound. 

1869  .  .  .  Mark  Twain's  Innocents  Abroad. 

1870  .  .  .  Rossetti's  Poems. 

1870  .  .  .  Bret  Harte's  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp. 

1872  .  .  .  Howells'  Their  Wedding  Journey. 

1873  .  .  .  Pater's  Studies  in  the  Renaissance. 
1875  •  •  •  James'  A  Passionate  Pilgrim. 
1882  .  .  .  Stevenson's  New  Arabian  Nights. 


INDEX 


Born.  Dm 

1672 Addison,  Joseph,  182,  183, 187,  191, 193, 195. . . .  1719 

849 JElfred,  King,  3,  15,  19,  23,  24,  27 901 

Fl.  1006 ^Ifric  (Grammaticus),  29 

Fl.  1005 ^If ric  (Bata)  ,29 

908? iS^thelwold,  Bishop,  28 984 

1721 Akenside,  Mark,  214,  219 1770 

735 Alcuin,  27 804 

Alexander,  Sir  W.  (see  Stirling,  Earl  of) 

Fl.  1420 Andrew  of  Wyntoun,  91 

1555 Andrewes,  Lancelot,  153, 154 1626 

1667 Arbuthnot,  Dr.  John,  185 1735 

1822 Arnold,  Matthew,  248,  271, 279 1888 

1515 Ascham,  Roger,  84, 99 1568 

1775 Austen,  Jane,  210 Z817 

1561 Bacon,  Sir  Francis,  104, 108, 109, 123, 144, 152.  .1626 

673  Baeda,  3,  7,  14, 15,  25,  26 735 

1826 Bagehot,  Walter,  272 1877 

1816 Bailey,  Philip,  247 

1316? Barbour,  John,  91 1395 

1475? Barclay,  Alexander,  88 1552 

1820 Barnes,  William,  246 1886 

1630 Barrow,  Isaac,  179 1677 

1615 Baxter,  Richard,  154 1691 

1735 Beattie,  James,  216,  220 1803 

1584 Beaumont,  Francis,  144-145 1616 

1616 Beaumont,  Joseph,  159 1699 

1803 Beddoes,  Thomas,  244 1849 

Z640 Behn,  Aphra,  194 1689 

343 


344  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Born.  Died. 

628? Benedict,  Biscop,  26 690 

1748 Bentham,  Jeremy,  208 1832 

1662 Bentley,  Richiird,  182, 190 1742 

1685 Berkeley,  Bishop,  188, 190 1753 

1388? Bemers,  Juliana,  75 

1467 Bemers,  Lord,  83 1532 

1650? Blackmore,  Sir  Richard,  187 1729 

1699 Blair,  Robert,  213 1746 

1757 Blake,  William,  222-224 1S27 

Fl.  1470-1492 Blind  Harry,  91 

1766 Bloomfleld,  Robert,  225 1823 

1545 Bodley,  Sir  Thomas,  154 1613 

1678 Bolingbroke,  Lord,  185,  190,  199 1751 

1803 Borrow,  George,  260 1881 

1740 Boswell,  James,  199 1795 

1627 Boyle,  Robert,  151 1691 

1816 Bronte,  Charlotte,  260 1855 

1554 Brooke,  Lord  (Fulke  Greville) ,  123 1628 

Broome,  Richard,  148 1652? 

1689 Broome,  Willisun,  185 1745 

1778 Brown,  Thomas,  208 1820 

Z77Z Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  291 1810 

1605 Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  154 1682 

1591 Browne,  William,  157 1643 

1809 Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  278 1861 

iSia Browning,  Robert,  224,  244,  247,  277 1889 

1730 Bruce,  James,  209 1794 

1746 Bruce,  Michael,  221,  222 1767 

1794 Bryant,  William  Cullen,  311 1878 

i6a3 Buckingham,  George  Villiers,  Duke  of,  176, 

193 1687 

182a Buckle,  Henry  Thomas,  270 1862 

i6a8 Bunyan,  John,  168 1688 

1729 Burke,  Edmund,  199,  205 1797 

1643 Burnet,  Bishop,  179,  182 1715 

1752 Bumey,  Frances  (Madame  D'Arblay),  aoa 1840 

1759 Bums,  Robert,  90,  222, 226, 243 1796 

1577 Burton,  Robert,  154 1640 

z69a Butler,  Bishop,  190 1753 

1619 Butler,  Samuel,  174, 181 1680 

1788 Byron,  Lord,  236,  237, 243,  244 1834 


INDEX  345 

Bour.  DixD. 

Fl.  670 Caedmon,  3, 12-19 

1831 Calverley,  Charles  Stuart,  279 1834 

1551 Camden,  William,  151 1623 

1777 Campbell,  Thomas,  207,  235 1844 

Temp.  Hen,  VI.  .Campeden,  Hugh  de,  75 

Campion,  Thomas,  108 1619 

1770 Canning,  George,  207 1827 

1393 Capgrave,  John,  75 1464 

1598? Carew,  Thomas,  158 1639? 

1795 Carlyle,  Thomas,  206,  268 1881 

1422? Caxton,  William,  77,  78,  86,  87 1491? 

1748. Cecil,  Richard,  208 1810 

1667? Centlivre,  Susannah,  194 1723 

1780 Chalmers,  Dr.,  208 1847 

1559? Chapman,  George,  117, 141-143 1634 

1619 Charleton,  Walter,  181 1707 

1752 Chatterton,  Thomas,  217 1770 

1340 Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  34,  52,  61-70,  78,  86,  88,  90, 

91,  94,  216 1400 

1514 Cheke,  Sir  John,  82 1557 

Fl.  1430 Chestre,  Thomas,  75 

1602 Chillingworth,  William,  150, 153, 179 1644 

1731 Churchill,  Charles,  214 1764 

1671 Cibber,  CoUey,  185, 195 1757 

1609 Clarendon,  Edward  Hyde,  Earl  of,  150, 153 1674 

1675 Clarke,  Samuel,  190 1729? 

1835 Clemens,  Samuel  L.  (Mark  Twain),  307 

1819 Clough,  Arthur  Hugh,  248 1861 

1772 Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  122, 166,  206-208,227, 

229,  230 1834 

1467? Colet,  John,  82, 104 1519 

1650 Collier,  Jeremy,  194 1726 

1676 Collins,  Anthony,  190 1729 

1721 Collins,  William,  157,  214,  220 1759 

1732 Colman,  George  (elder) ,  195 1794 

1762 Colman,  George  (younger),  195 1836 

1670 Congreve,  William,  194, 195 1729 

1562 Constable,  Henry,  119,  156 1613 

1789 Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  293 1851 

1577? Coryat,  Thomas,  152 1617 

1630 Cotton,  Charles,  117, 191 1687 


346  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

BoRM.  Dno. 

1571 Cotton,  Sir  Robert,  154 1631 

1488 Coverdale,  Miles,  85 1568 

1618 Cowley,  Abraham,  159, 172,  173,  182, 191 1667 

Z731 Cowper,  William,  90, 213,  222-225,  243 1800 

Z754 Crabbe,  George,  222,  225 1832 

1489 Cranmer,  Thomas,  85 1556 

1613? Crashaw,  Richard,  7, 157, 158 1649 

1617 Cudworth,  Ralph,  179 1688 

1732 Comberland,  Richard,  195 1811 

Fl.  8th  century.  .Cynewulf,  5-7, 12, 15, 19,  21, 22, 48, 49 

1562 Daniel,  Samuel,  108, 119, 121, 152 1619 

1795 Darley,  George,  244 1846 

1809 Darwin,  Charles,  274 1882 

1606 Davenant,  Sir  William,  148, 174, 193 1668 

Fl.  1623 Davenport,  Robert,  148 

1569 Davies,  Sir  John,  123 i6a6 

Fl.  1606 Day,  John,  143 

1661? Defoe,  Daniel,  183, 187-189 1731 

1570? Dekker,  Thomas,  141,142 Z641? 

Z615 Denham,  Sir  John,  172, 173 1669 

Z785 De  Quincey,  Thomas,  207 1859 

i8i2 Dickens,  Charles,  261 1870 

1804 Disraeli,  Benjamin,  259 z88i 

1840 Dobson,  Austin,  279 

1573 Donne,  John,  124, 157 1631 

1637 Dorset,  Charles  Sackville,  Earl  of,  177 Z706 

1474? Douglas,  Gawin,  90,  93 1533 

X795 Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  311 i8ao 

1563 Drayton,  Michael,  119, 121,  123 1631 

1585 Dnimmond,  of  Hawthomden,  William,  124, 157. 1649 

1631 Dryden,  John,  68,  159,  168,  172-174,  178,  181, 

184,  193, 198,  216,  238 1700 

Dn  Jon,  Francis  (see  Junius) 

X465? Dunbar,  William,  90,  92-94 '530? 

934 Dunttan,  Archbishop,  28 968 

Z700? Dyer,  John,  219 Z758 

640? Ealdhelm,  Abbot  of  Malmesboiy,  3,  z8 709 

x6oz? Earle,  John,  153 Z665 

Bcgberht,  Archbishop,  37 766 


INDEX  347 

BoKW.  Died. 

1767 Edgeworth,  Maria,  210 1849 

1703 Edwards,  Jonathan,  288 1758 

1490? Elyot,  Sir  Thomas,  83 1546 

1803 Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  303, 316 1882 

1467 Erasmus,  82,  87 1536 

1635? Etherege,  Sir  George,  194 1691 

1819 Evans,  Marian  (George  Eliot),  263 1880 

i6ao Evelyn,  John,  182 1706 

Fairfax,  Edward,  116 1635 

1678 Farquhar,  George,  194 1707 

1683 Fenton,  Elijah,  185 1730 

Z750 Fergusson,  Robert,  222 1774 

1783 Ferrier,  Susan,  210 1854 

1707 Fielding,  Henry,  195,  201 1754 

Filmer,  Sir  Robert,  180 1653 

1459? Fisher,  Bishop,  82 1535 

1809 Fitzgerald,  Edward,  247,  279 1883 

Flecknoe,  Richard,  176 1678? 

Flemming,  Robert,  80 1483 

X588? Fletcher,  Giles,  157 1623 

1579 Fletcher,  John,  139, 144, 145,  i6i 1625 

1582 Fletcher,  Phineas,  157 1650 

Florence  of  Worcester,  39 1118 

ISS3? Florio,  John,  117 1625 

Z720 Foote,  Samuel,  195 1777 

Fl.  1639 Ford,  John,  147 

1394? Fortescue,  Sir  John,  77 1476? 

1516 Foze,  John,  loi 1587 

1706 Franklin,  Benjamin,  289 1790 

Z823 Freeman,  Edward  Augustas,  270 1892 

1818 Froude,  James  Anthony,  269 1894 

1608 Fuller,  Thomas,  153, 154 1661 

Fl.  1140? Gaimar,  Geoffrey,  41 

1717 Garrick,  David,  195,  216 1779 

1661 Garth,  Sir  Samuel,  187 17x9 

1525? Gascoigne,  George,  99,  124 1577 

1810 Gaskell,  Mrs.,  264 1865 

1685 Gay,  John,  185, 187,  195,  222 1732 

ziio? Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  40,  44,  71 1154 


348  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

BoxR.  Dim 

1737 Gibbon,  Edward,  203 1794 

Fl.  1639 Glapthorne,  Henry,  148 

Gloucester,  Humphrey,  Duke  of ,  79 1446 

1756 Godwin,  William,  210 1836 

1536? Golding,  Arthur,  100 1605? 

1728 Goldsmith,  Oliver,  195, 199,  302,  206, 220, 221. . .  .1774 

1540 Googe,  Bamaby ,  loi 1594 

1555 Gosson,  Stephen,  108 1624 

1325? Gower,  John,  58,  59,  69,  79 1408 

Grafton,  Richard,  102, 152 1572? 

X716 Gray,  Thomas,  157, 174,215-216,219-221,235.  ..1771 

1837 Green,  John  Richard,  269 1883 

X696 Green,  Matthew,  187 1737 

Z560? Greene,  Robert,  no,  131, 132, 134 1592 

Greville,  Fulke  (see  Brooke,  Lord) 

Grey,  William,  Bishop  of  Ely,  80 1478 

Z519 Grimoald,  Nicholas,  97 1562 

Z446? Grocjm,  William,  82 1519 

1794 Grote,  George,  270 1871 

Ganthorpe,  John,  Detm  of  Wells,  80 1498 

Z605 Habington,  William,  159 1654 

1552? Hakluyt,  Richard,  109 1616 

1584 Hales,  John,  153,  179 1656 

1651 Halifax,  Charles  Montague,  Lord,  177 1715 

Z574 Hall,  Joseph,  Bishop  of  Norwich,  124, 153 1656 

1764 Hall,  Robert,  208 1831 

1777 Hallam,  Henry,  209 1859 

1790 Halleck,  Fitz-Greene,  311 1867 

Z757 Hamilton,  Alexander,  291 1804 

1677 Hanmer,  Sir  Thomas,  216 1746 

1378 Harding,  John,  75 1465? 

i$6i Harington,  Sir  John,  116 1612 

1611 Harrington,  James,  123, 180 1677 

1839 Harte,  Francis  Bret,  297,  322 

1705 Hartley,  David,  203 1757 

1545? Harvey,  Gabriel,  loi,  108,  no 1630 

1578 Hiu-vey,  William,  151 1657 

Hawes,  Stephen,  86 1523? 

Z804 Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  295 1864 

174s Hayley,  William,  209 1820 


INDEX  349 

Born,  Died. 

1778 Hazlitt,  William,  207 1830 

1793 Hemans,  Felicia,  244 1835 

1084? Henry  of  Huntingdon,  40 1155 

1430? Henryson,  Robert,  92 1506? 

1593 Herbert,  George,  157,  158 1633 

1591 Herrick,  Robert,  157-160,  219 1674 

1497? Hejrwood,  John,  128 1580? 

Heywood,  Thomas,  100 1650? 

Higden,  Ranulf,  70 1364 

1588 Hobbes,  Thomas,  123,  150, 153, 180 1679 

1370? Hoccleve,  Thomas,  73 1450? 

1745 Holcroft,  Thomas,  210 1809 

Holinshed,  Raphael,  192 1580? 

1809 Holmes,  Olirer  Wendell,  305, 317 1894 

1799 Hood,  Thomas,  225 1845 

1554? Hooker,  Richard,  109 1600 

1770? Hope,  Thomas,  210 1831 

1837 Howells,  William  Dean,  297 

1711 Hume,  David,  202-205,  2<^ 1776 

Hunnis,  William,  120 1597 

1784 Hunt,  Leigh,  241,  242 1859 

1694 Hutcheson,  Francis,  203 1746 

1825 Huxley,  Thomas,  275 1895 

1753 Inchbald,  Elizabeth,  210 iSax 

X783 iTTing,  Washington,  392,  299 1859 

1394 James  I.  of  Scotland,  91 1437 

1843 James,  Henry,  297 

1743 Jefferson,  Thomas,  290 1826 

1773 Jeffrey,  Francis,  207 1850 

Fl.  1387 John  of  Trevisa,  70,  78 

1709 Johnson,  Samuel,  197,  198,  205,  213, 216 1784 

1573? Jonson,  Ben,  109,  133,  141,  142, 144,  157,  160 1637 

1589 Junius  (Francis  du  Jon),  16 1677 

i8th  century **  Junius  "  (writer  of  the  "Letters,"  1769- 1772), 

197.305 

1795 Keats,  John,  117,  aa8, 240-244 1821 

179a Keble,  John,  247 1866 

1637 Ken,  Thomas,  Bishop,  177 171; 


350  ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

Born.  Dik) 

X819 Kingsley,  Charles,  347,  265,  279 1875 

1550? KnoUes,  Richard,  153 i6i3 

I5S7? Kyd,  Thomas,  131 1595? 

Lacy,  John,  194 z68i 

1775 Lamb,  Charles,  123, 148,  207,  208 1834 

1802 Landon,  Letitia  Elizabeth  ("  L.  E.  L."),  244. . .  1838 

1775 Landor,  Walter  Savage,  207,  208 1864 

1735 Langhom,  Dr.  John,  221 1779 

1330? Langlsmd,  William,  49,  52-58,  loi 1400 

1843 Lanier,  Sidney,  322 1881 

14857 Latimer,  Hugh,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  86 1555 

Fl.  I300 Layamon,  33,  34,  41-43,  48 

1757 Lee,  Harriet,  210 1851 

1653? Lee,  Nat,  194 1693 

1750 Lee,  Sophia,  210 1824 

1506? Leland,  John,  83 155a 

Leofiic,  Bishop  of  Exeter,  3 1073 

1616 L'Estrange,  Sir  Roger,  180 1704 

1806 Lever,  Charles,  259 187a 

Lichfield,  William,  75 1447 

X468? Lilly,  William,  82 1522 

1809 Lincoln,  Abraham,  298 1865 

1771 Lingard,  John,  209 1851 

163a. Locke,  John,  123,  180 1704 

i8az Locker-Lampson,  Frederick,  279 1895 

1794 Lockhart,  John  Gibson,  209,  210 1854 

Z5s8?.  i . . ; Lodge,  Thomas,  no,  120, 124 1635 

1807 Longfellow,  Henry  Wadsworth,  313 Z883 

1618 Lovelace,  Richard,  158 1658 

1819 Lowell,  James  Russell,  306,  318 189Z 

1370? Lydgate,  John,  47,  72,  73,  78,  99,  loi 1451? 

1554? Lyly,  John,  106,  131 1606 

1490 L3nidsay,  Sir  David,  94,  95,  221 1555 

1803 Lytton,  Edward  G.  E.  L.  Bulwer,  278 1873 

1800 Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  267,  379 1859 

1765 Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  206 1833 

1697 Macklin,  Charles,  195 Z797 

1736 Macpherson,  James,  217 1796 

1773 McCrie,  Thomas,  309 1835 


INDEX  351 

BoRH.  Dnm. 

1705? Hallet,  David,  216 176$ 

Fl.  X470 Maloiy,  Sir  Thomas,  77 

1766 Malthus,  Thomas,  209 1834 

1670? Mandeville,  Bernard,  190 1733 

Fl.  1288-1388 Maanyng,  of  Brunne,  Robert,  38,  51 

Fl.  1200 Map,  Walter,  45 

1564 Marlowe,  Christopher,  119,  120,  131,  133,  143, 

222 1593 

1792 Marryat,  Frederick,  259 1848 

1575? Marston,  John,  124, 141, 142 1634 

1621 Marvell,  Andrew,  157, 161, 174, 175,  219 1678 

1583 Massinger,  Philip,  146 1640 

1663 Mather,  Cotton,  287,  299 1728 

Matthew  Paris,  39 1259 

14th  century . . .  .Maundevile,  Sir  John,  70 

1595 May,  Thomas,  153 1650 

1828 Meredith,  George,  265 

1808 Merivale,  Charles,  270 1893 

1735 Mickle,  William,  221 1788 

1570? Middleton,  Thomas,  146 1627 

1773 Mill,  James,  209 1836 

1806 Mill,  John  Stuart,  274 1873 

X791 Milman,  Henry  Hart,  270 1868 

1608 Milton,  John,  16,  90,  96,  144,  155,  161-168,  171, 

173,  219, 224 1674 

1300? Minot,  Laurence,  51 1353? 

Z744 Mitford,  William,  209 X827 

Montague,  Charles  (see  Halifax,  Lord) 

1779 Moore,  Thomas,  209,  236 185a 

1614 More,  Henry,  159 1687 

1478 More,  Sir  Thomas,  40,  82,  83 1535 

1834 Morris,  William,  279-280 1896 

Z814 Motley,  John  Lothrop,  3cx> 1877 

1649 Mulgrave,  John  Sheffield,  Earl  of,  177 1721 

1727 Murphy,  Arthur,  195 1805 

Fl.  1638 ITabbes,  Thomas,  148 

1567 Nash,  Thomas,  108,  131 i6oz 

Fl.  1375 Nassington,  William  of ,  75 

i6ao NeTile,  Henry,  180 1694 

2801 Newman,  John  Henry,  273 1890 


352  ENGLISH    LITERATURE 

BoRK.  Died, 

164a Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  178 1727 

1725 Newton,  John,  208 1807 

Fl.  1250 Nicholas  of  Guildford,  50 

Fl.  1390 Nicholas  of  Hereford,  57 

1535? North,  Sir  Thomas,  117 1601? 

1533 Norton,  Thomas,  75,  129 1584 

1653 Oldham,  John,  177 1683 

1769 Opie,  Amelia,  210 1853 

107s Ordericus  Vitalis,  39 "43? 

FL  laoo Omnin,  42 

Oswald  of  Worcester,  28 972 

1653 Otway,  Thomas,  194 1685 

1581 Overbury,  Sir  Thomas,  153 1613 

1737 Paine,  Thomas,  206,  291 1809 

1540? Painter,  William,  102 1594 

1743 Paley,  William,  208 1805 

1504 Parker,  Archbishop,  151 1575 

1823 Parkman,  Francis,  300 1893 

^679 Pamell,  Thomas,  185 1718 

1839 Pater,  Walter,  272 1894 

1823 Patmore,  Coventry,  246 1896 

1791 Payne,  John  Howard,  311 1852 

139s? Pecock,  Reginald,  77 1460? 

1558? Peele,  George,  no.  131, 135 1597? 

1633 Pepys,  Samuel,  182 1703 

1729 Percy,  Thomas,  Bishop,  216,  223 1811 

1623 Petty,  Sir  William,  151,  i8o 1687 

1510? Phaer,  Thomas,  100 1560 

1675 Phillips,  Ambrose,  187 1749 

1676 Phillips,  John,  187 1709 

Phreas,  John,  80 1465 

1809 Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  294,  318 1849 

1667 Pomfret,  John,  187 1702 

1500 Pole,  Reginald,  104 1558 

1688 Pope,  Alexander,   173,   175,   176,181,  184-188, 

190,  198,  200,  213,  216,  219,  222 1744 

1802 Praed,  Winthrop  Mackworth,  279 1839 

1796 Prescott,  William  Hickling,  300 1859 

1664 Prior,  Matthew,  177,  185,  187 1721 


INDEX  353 

BoKN.  Died. 

1600 Pr3mne,  William,  155 1669 

1577 Purchas,  Sjimuel,  152 ^ 1626 

Fl.  isth  century.  Purvey,  John,  57 After  1427 

1530? Puttenham,  George,  107 1600? 

1592 Quarles,  Francis,  159 1644 

1764 Radcliffe,  Ann,  210 1823 

1552 Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  114, 1x5, 152 1618 

1686 Ramsay,  Allan,  187,  221,  222 1758 

1605 Randolph,  Thomas,  148 1634 

1814 Reade,  Charles,  264 1884 

1710 Reid,  Thomas,  203 1796 

1723 Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  199 1792 

1772 Ricardo,  David,  209 1823 

1689 Richardson,  Samuel,  200 1761 

Ripley,  George,  75 1490 

Fl.  1295 Robert  of  Gloucester,  44 

1721 Robertson,  William,  202 1793 

Fl.  1551 Robinson,  Ralph,  83 

1647 Rochester,  John  Wilmot,  Earl  of,  177 1680 

1509? Rogers,  John,  85 1555 

1763 Rogers,  Samuel,  228,  235 1855 

RoUe,  of  Hampole,  Richard,  38 1349 

1634 Roscommon,  Dillon  Wentworth,  Earl  of,  177. .  1684 

1828 Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  249,  279 1882 

1830 Rossetti,  Christina,  249,  279 1894 

1674 Rowe,  Nicholas,  195 1718 

Fl.  17th  century..  Rowley,  William,  148 

Roy,  William,  85 1531 

1819 Ruskin,  John,  270 1900 

1836 Russell,  Lady  Rachel,  182 1723 

1536 Sackville,  Thomas,  Lord  Bnckhurst,  95,  96,  99, 

100,  129 1608 

St.  John,  Henry  (see  Bolingbroke,  Lord) 

1577 Sandys,  George,  152 1644 

Z697 Savage,  Richard,  214 1743 

Savile,  George  (see  Halifax,  Lord) 

1747 Scott,  Thomas,  208 1821 

I771 Scott,  Sir  Walter,  90, 206, 210-212, 216, 328, 234. 1832 

1639 Sedley,  Sir  Chwles,  177, 194 1701 

2A 


354  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Bour.  DiKD. 

Z584 Selden,  John,  151,  152 1654 

Sellynge,  William,  80 

1640 Shadwell,  Thomas,  176,  194...' 1693 

1671 Shaftesbury,  Anthony,  Earl  of,  190 1713 

1564 Shakespeare,  William,  82,  90,  96,  98,  117-121, 

130-142,  161,  170-172,  193,  212,  216,  218 1616 

1792 Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  22,228,  236,  238-244-.  .1822 

1714 Shenstone,  William,  216,  221 1763 

1751 Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  195 1816 

1641 Sherlock,  William,  179 1707 

1596 Shirley,  James,  148,  160 1666 

Fl.  1440 Shirley,  John,  78 

1577 Sibbes,  Richard,  154 1635 

1632 Sidney,  Algernon,  180 1683 

1554 Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  102,  106-108,  iii,  115, 119. .  1586 

Fl.  nth  and  I     _.            , ,%    ,. 
^,       ^    .     I  ..Simeon  of  Durham,  39 

I2th  centuries  j 

1460? Skelton,  John,  79,  87,  88, 95 1528? 

1722 Smart,  Christopher,  221 1771 

J723 Smith,  Adam,  204 1790 

1512 Smith,  Sir  Thomas,  82 1577 

1771 Smith,  Sydney,  207 1845 

Z721 Smollett,  Tobias,  201 i77r 

1633 South,  Robert,  179 1716 

1660 Southeme,  Thomas,  194 1746 

1774 Southey,  Robert,  207,  209,  227-229 1843 

1560? Southwell,  Robert,  118 1595 

1553 Speed,  John,  151 1629 

1562 Spelman,  Sir  Henry,  151 i64r 

1820 Spencer,  Herbert,  275 

1553? Spenser,  Edmund,  91,  95,99,  107,  110-117,119, 

122,  157, 170,  216,  222 1599 

1672 Steele,  Sir  Richard,  191,  192 1729 

1713 Sterne,  Laurence,  201,  202 1763 

1850 Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  266 1894 

1753 Stewart,  Dugald,  208 1828 

163s Stillingfleet,  Edward,  179 1699 

1567? Stirling,  Sir  William  Alexander,  Earl  of,  124, 

157 1640 

1525 Stow,  John,  102, 152 1605 

z8ii Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  295 1896 


INDEX  355 

BOKN.  DiSD. 

1609 Sockliag,  Sir  John,  148,  158 1642 

1516? Surrey,  Henry  Howard,  Earl  of,  86,  88,  95-97.  .1547 

1667 Swift,  Jonathan,  183,  185,  188, 189,  198 1745 

1837 Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  279 

1613 Taylor,  Jeremy,  153 1667 

1628 Temple,  Sir  William,  182, 191 1699 

1809 Tennyson,  Alfred,  5,  7,  20,  41,  67,  224,  244, 346, 

247,  276 1892 

z8ii Thackeray,  William  Makepeace,  262 1863 

1688 Theobald,  Lewis,  185,  216 1744 

1797 Thirwall,  Connop,  270 1875 

1225? Thomas  of  Erceldoune,  91 1300? 

1700 Thomson,  James,  94,  157,  188,  219,  235 1748 

1817 Thoreau,  Henry  David,  304 1862 

1686 Tickell,  Thomas,  187 Z740 

1891 Ticknor,  George,  306 1871 

1630 Tillotson,  John,  Archbishop,  179 1694 

1656 Tindal,  Matthew,  190 1733 

1670 Toland,  John,  190 1722 

Fl.   1551 Tottel,  Richard,  97,  100 

FI.  1600-1613 Toumeur,  Cyril,  143 

1815 Trollope,  Anthony,  264 1882 

1530? Turbervile,  George,  loi,  102 1594? 

1808 Turner,  Charles  Tennyson,  246 1879 

Turpin,  Archbishop,  45 

1526? Tusser,  Thomas,  97 1580 

1484? Tyndale,  William,  83,  84 1536 

1820 Tjmdall,  John,  275 1893 

1505 Udall,  Nicholas,  129 1556 

1580 Ussher,  Archbishop,  15 1656 

1666? Vanbrugh,  Sir  John,  194 1736 

i62r Vaughan,  Henry,  159,  219 1693 

1120? Wace,  41 1184? 

1822 Wallace,  Alfred  Russel,  274 

1605 Waller,  Edmund,  159,  172, 173 1687 

1616 Wallis,  John,  151 1703 

1717 Walpole,  Horace,  199 1797 


356  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

BOKN.  DlBQ 

1676 Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  197 1745 

1593 Walton,  Izaak,  155,  182 1683 

1698 Warburton,  William,  Bishop,  185,  190,  216. . . .  1779 

1460 Warham,  Archbishop,  82 1532 

1558? Warner,  William,  121 1609 

1722 Warton,  Joseph,  220 1800 

1728 Warton,  Thomas,  207,  216,  220 1790 

1732 Washington,  George,  290 1799 

Fl.  i6th  century.  Webbe,  William,  icq 

1582? Webster,  John,  144,  146 1652? 

1782 Webster,  Daniel,  298 1852 

1708 Wesley,  Charles,  224 1788 

1703 Wesley,  John,  208 1791 

1714 Whitfield,  George,  208 1770 

1720 White,  Gilbert,  200 1793 

1819 Whitman,  Walt,  320 1892 

i8c7 Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  314 1892 

1727 Wilkes,  John,  197 1797 

109s? William  of  Malmesbury,  39 1142? 

Fl.  1327 William  of  Shoreham,  38 

Fl.  13th  century.  William  of  Waddington,  38 

1785 Wilson,  Professor  John  (Christopher  North), 

207 1854 

1520? Wilson,  Thomas,  97 1581 

1588 Wither   George   157, 159,  161 1667 

1659 Wollaston,  William,  190 1724 

Worcester,  John  Tiptoft,  "Eaxl  of,  79 1470 

1770 Wordsworth,  William,  92,  118,  207, 221, 223, 225, 

227,  230-234,  239,  243 1850 

1568 Wotton,  Sir  Henry,  92,  123, 152 1639 

Fl.  1002-1023. . . .  Wulfstan,  Archbishop,  29 

1503 Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  86,  88, 95, 96 1542 

1640? Wycherley,  William,  194 1715 

1320? Wyclif,  John,  52.  53,  57 1384 

1681 Yoang,  Edward,  213 1765 


INDEX  TO  FOREIGN  AUTHORS 


BoKM.                                                                                           Dbd. 
X474 Ariosto,  no,  1x6 1533 

1313 Boccaccio,  61,  62, 74,  80, 99 1375 

1434 Boiardo,  no 1494 

1636 Boileau,  172 171Z 

Calpren^de,  192 1663 

1424 Chalcondylas,  82 151Z 

Fl.  nth  century.  .Chrestien  of  Troyes,  44 

Z06B.C Cicero,  94,  100 43  B.C. 

Contarini,  104 1550 

1606 Comeille,  192 1684 

1717 D'Alembert,  197 1783 

1265 Dante,  61,  62,  70 1321 

Dares  Phrygius,  47 

385  B.C Demosthenes,  100 322  B.C 

Dictys  Cretensis,  47 

Z713 Diderot,  197 1784 

1749 Goethe,  198,  206,  211 1833 

13th  century Guido  delle  Colonne,  47 

Homer,  117,  143, 186,  224 

65  B.C Horace,  163 8B.C. 

1621 La  Fontaine,  172 1695 

1729 Lessing,  192,  205 1781 

Z496 Marot,  III Z544 

1280? Meung,  Jean  de,  59 

357 


358  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

Born.  Dmx 

1633 Moli^re,  193 1673 

Z533 Montaigne,  1 17, 191 159a 

1689 Montesquieu,  197,  20a 1755 

43  B.C. Ovid,  94, 100 X7A.D. 

1304 Petrarca,  58,  61,  80,  96,  116 1374 

437  B.C Plato,  96 347  B.C 

Fl.  50-100 Plutarch,  100 

1639 Racine,  193 1699 

Fl.  12th  century .  .Robert  of  Boron,  44 

171a Rousseau,  197 1778 

1458 Sannazaro,  102 X530 

1759 Schiller,  198 1805 

1601 Scudery,  192 1667 

Fl.  930 Skallagrimsson,  Egil,  24 

45? Statins,  47 96? 

1544 Tasso,  no,  116 1595 

70  B.C. Virgil,  7,  47,  93, 96, 100, 177 19  B.C 

1694 Voltaire,  132, 135, 195, 197,  aoa. 1778 


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